Duncan Harley

As jukebox musicals go Beautiful hits the sweet spot. Familiar songs, slick choreography and simple staging litter the production. Add Daisy Wood-Davis to the mix, sprinkle in a measure of 60’s pop culture fold-in some sugary bio and cook slowly. Result? Mouth-watering! Ok, perhaps the bio is a little bit hazy in places. The story dwells on Carol’s first marriage and kinda glosses out the other three. And maybe music insiders would express surprise at the portrayal of a sugar-sweet music industry bereft of draconian contracts and stingy executives. But this is entertainment at its best, and not by any means a social history class. So, if the audience comes out smiling, all is well in nostalgia-land. Alongside the familiar Carol King solos, and there are quite a few, the show makes great play of the fact that the early King was in essence a prolific maker of hits. But for other people. She later found her own voice. But her early career saw her sweating as a jobbing-songwrit...

This unfolding story of the demise of the Weimar Republic is seen through the eyes of young American novelist Cliff Bradshaw – played here by Charles Hagerty - and is based loosely around Christopher Isherwood’s classic 1939 novel  “Goodbye to Berlin”.   A central focus is the doomed love affair between English cabaret performer Sally Bowles, played here by Kara Lily Hayworth, and Cliff who has come to Berlin to complete a novel but soon becomes immersed in other distractions. Alongside his pursuit of Sally, a serial manizer, Cliff soon finds himself involved in money-laundering for the fascists and is witness to a moral decay which will ultimately destroy the easy-going morality of a city known by many at the time as the Babylon of Europe. Much of the action takes place in the Kit Kat Club – a place where ‘Here there are no troubles … Wilkommen, Leave your troubles outside … We have no troubles here! Here, life is beautiful.’ John Partridge plays the magnific...

I recall seeing a trio of caravans at Keith Show a decade or three ago, each emblazoned with hoardings offering palm-reading and each with a long line of hopefuls awaiting the chance to cross a palm with silver in fair exchange for a glimpse of the future. It was in the grander days of the country shows. Keith was filled to the gun-whales with folk intent on a bit of fun and maybe a dalliance or two over the show-days and up at the show-park two full-grown heifers were roasting over a couple of spits. Following a day selling fancy goods, I wandered over to Reidhaven  Square, which is where I found the caravans. They were top of the range trailers with all the mod-cons and, to the untrained eye at least, seemed to represent the height of traveller luxury. Lace curtained and shiny with chrome and fancy ornaments in the windows, each claimed a connection with the original Gypsy Rose Lee. Two proclaimed direct lineage, a daughter I recall and maybe even a grand-daught...