Ernest and the Pale Moon

Ok, I know this is a very poor quality picture, it was taken with my camera phone at the start of the show (while the house lights were still up as the audience entered the theater). This was actually the second show I saw today and it was really good, it was a sort of mix between Hitchcock's "Rear Window" and Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart". The main character Ernest (pictured) murders a young woman (accidentally, he thought he was murdering somebody else!) which was witnessed through the window and hides the body, he is then over the next couple days driven to insanity due to guilt. I'm deliberately keeping the plot vague so not to give away any spoilers in-case you go and see the show, I'd highly recommend it, it is very good, dark and scary and the stage craft is very clever. And there were a couple moments where there were screams from the audience and even made me jump at least once. :-)

The first show I saw was "A Midsummer Night's Dream : The Rock Musical" which was also good, I was very impressed by the surprisingly young cast (early to mid teens I'd say). It wasn't very hard core rock, more along the lines of Grease meets Shakespeare, but it was enjoyable and very entertaining.

Third show of the day was "The Despondent Divorcée", which was another good show, a play set in a high class 1940's immediately following a suicide on it's grand re-opening. The story follows a young reporter as he talks to the staff of the hotel and pieces together a picture of the victim. As the main story is centered around the hotels new jazz bar there were a number of quality live jazz interludes. The costumes were great and the setting (a beautiful decorated room in Riddle's Court) really fitted the whole atmosphere of a high class hotel. I did find the story a little to follow at times at it involved a number of "flash backs" which is hard to do in live theater. Also at the end it was not entirely clear if the suicide victim actually got divorced and it did not really have much relevance to the play (unless I missed something).