What a glorious feeling

Only one taker for yesterday's impromptu quiz, and I'm afraid you didn't get it, Jim, which left me Singing In The Rain all by myself. A production at Sadler's Wells (one of the many theatre in London that orbits the West End from afar) is nearing the end of it's run and a few friends and I decided that it would make for a fun outing (influenced by the fact that we managed to get some heavily discounted tickets).

I remember catching the film a few years ago and, truth be told, I couldn't recall all that much about it. Some of the big musical number lodged in my memory, but the plot fluttered gently away. Perhaps not too surprising given that it's pure candyfloss - artfully constructed, deliciously sweet, and ultimately 99% air - but terrific fun nevertheless. The story concerns the fate of three friends in the movie industry back in the 1920's just at Holywood is about to be transformed by the arrival of talking pictures. The two biggest stars are the dashing Don Lockwood and the lovely (but spiteful) Lina Lamont. Both have to make the transition to the talkies, the only problem being that Lina's voice is marginally less pleasant than listening to fingernails drawn down a blackboard. Obviously something has to be down about Lina, and hijinx ensue - naturally.

The principal lead is Adam Cooper, who's more famously known as the Swan from Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake (which I also saw once upon a time, though I don't believe he was the swan then). Often the problem I have when I find myself in the audience of any skilled practitioner is that above a certain level I simply cannot distinguish between the good and the insanely great (and in several cases I'm not sure I can even separate the adequate from the mediocre). I can happily sit back and enjoy what I'm seeing or hearing, but at the end of the day, I'm as happy listening to the opera singers busking at Covent Garden as I would be in the company of Pavarotti. Having said that, Adam Cooper, as Lockwood, quite literally danced circles around everyone else on stage. It's not that the rest of the actors on stage couldn't dance - as far as I could tell they performed admirably, with tremendous enthusiasm and energy - but Adam Cooper was simply operating on a different level. He was amazingly graceful by comparison. Given that he is a trained ballet dancer, this perhaps shouldn't have come as a great surprise, but I was still amazed - I could tell the difference, that's how good he was.

Naturally the big event was the deluge which occurred, unsurprisingly enough, at the end of act one, thus allowing a good twenty minutes for the stage to be dried off during the interval. As in the film, it's a standout scene. Aside from being technically impressive (we're talking about a lot of water), it's also a wonderful celebration of pure happiness, which you cannot fail to be carried along with. It's heart warming. It's life affirming. It's the sort of scene such cliches were born to describe - I'm smiling just now even thinking about. It's every bit as infectious and you might imagine too - several people around me started to hum along with the music in spite of themselves, and I'm certain the majority of the audience tum-te-tum-tummed as they left the theatre at the end of the night.

Even the safety curtain managed to provide a minor source of amusement during the interval, as it descended rather gingerly to hover just above the puddles on stage, as though fearing to get wet. It also received a small round of a applause at it rose a few inches more to allow what I shall term "a water sucking device" (bearing a strong resemblance to a large vacuum cleaner) to catch a trickle of water that was threatening to soak the orchestra.

All in all, it's a most excellent production, and pehaps exactly what I needed to ward off my interview funk for a while. Go along if you get the chance.