24th February Less in Leicester can be more


On Thursday night TOM and I had a little trip to the theatre down in Leiecester. Not our usual choice of venue but it seemed a good oppertunity to go and see a show at what I certainly thought was the 'newish' Curve Theatre. So imagine my surprise to discover that it had in fact been open since December 2008.

We will be down here again in a couple of weeks time to see Life of Pi in the main theatre whereas this time we a chance to explore the smaller studio venue which was hosting the premier of a new stage version of 'My Beautiful Launderette'. 

What neither of us knew until I had looked at a review was that this performance featured the return of Gordon Warnecke, who played the original Omar back in the 1985 film version, this time in the role of Papa. It also appeared that we were sat just behind a relative of another cast member judging by the number of times we saw his picture illuminate the darkness on her screen saver ,as she didn't appear able to turn her phone off.

As for the play itself well it certainly put the audience through a thorough wash cycle with a storyline full of misogyny, adultery, arranged marriages, racism, gender expectations, slurs, eviction notices, theft and violence. It wasn't always an easy watch because life wasn’t always beautiful in the laundrette but inspite of the 40 year gap between its original setting and today, it seemed as relevant as ever.

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