Thriller night

If it sounds like I'm doing nothing but going out, attending parties and shows: that's what it feels like, too. Tonight was the last of the shows I booked, but this weekend there's the Short Film Festival, distributed over 15 or so venues throughout York: that definitely looks worth a prolonged visit. After that it gets dark in my agenda - high time to stick my nose in the next "what's on in York".

On the assumption that it is more interesting to hear about my night-time experiences than about my daylight hours (and in the certain knowledge that they are more interesting to write about too) I will jump to 19:00 when it was time to go to Thriller Live, two and a half hours of Michael Jackson songs. I've been to the We Will Rock You musical and we all know Mama Mia, celebrating Queen and Abba, respectively, but this was billed as a concert, though taking place on stage, in the Grand Opera House York (not to be confused with the York Theatre Royal).

The weather was not the best: type 14 rain, light but dense, falling thick enough to get me quite wet in the less than ten minutes it took to get there. The next disappointment was my seat: as you can see on the photo, the ceiling, being the underside of the next higher balcony (or Grand Circle in theatre jargon) is quite low, hiding the top few meters of the stage. Fortunately all of the action remained just in view, at least when seated; only some of the light effects were lost.

I'm glad to say that was all that was negative about the experience. I have always liked the MJ beat, and the performance was excellent. "Concert" does not cover it, I think more than half the attraction is the dancing: atlethic, immaculately executed, sharp and hot. The troupe counted 15 in total, five of which were also singers. The visual feast was further enhanced by the wonderful wardrobes, diverse and quickly changed to fit the mood of the songs. The only part that didn't work for me was where they tried to depict MJ as a warrior for peace in line with Martin Luther King, Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon: I don't buy that at all, his music was great but the artist was the commercial type, with a very sad personal story. But oh my, what wonderful songs does he have to his credit!

I was trying to guess which song they would end with: you want to send the audience home on a high note, so it would have to be one of the favourites. My guess was either Billy Jean or Thriller, and that seemed borne out when those were performed in succession at the end (dancing zombies, we were back at Halloween!), but they were followed up by Bad - at which point unfortunately the audience was encouraged to stand up and clap in time with the music, meaning that now I really saw only the lower half of the action. That was bad. (Sorry for the lame pun, I couldn't resist.)

Headlight

Also bad was the fact that afterwards I found that I now have no headlight at all any more: someone had decided his need was greater than mine. It was indeed an easily detachable little lamp, the idea being that I could take it off whenever I would park the bike somewhere. Yeah right, I can't even remember to switch it off, forget about taking it off. What tickles me most is that I had just put in new batteries (as I promised my mom). I'm now considering to go back to the original meaning of the work "headlight" and use the headlamp that I actually took with me to York. Lots of advantages really: it could never be stolen, I could hardly forget to switch it off, and it always points to where I'm looking. I'm going to try it out for sure.