When We Are Married - J.B. Priestly

I was never impressed with a production of An Inspector Calls I saw a year or two ago, but was still hopeful this would be entertaining. And it was! This Garrick Theatre production, whilst generally lightly amusing, had its moments of laugh-out-loud comedy.
Three couples get together to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary, only to discover that they were never officially married. Priestly cleverly reveals the façade that was marriage at the time, where the couples only stayed together because they were  married and didn't want to ruin their name. The truths of their relationships are revealed.
I wasn't blown away with this, but it was entertaining none-the-less.

Season's Greetings - Alan Ayckbourn

I found this production very entertaining. It was my introduction to Alan Ayckbourn, and I highly enjoyed it. Hilariously funny but with incredibly powerful and emotional moments. These relationships are totally believable and devastating, but provide genius comedic situations. The idea of a family at Christmas turning into chaos is fairly obvious, but was executed in superb fashion.
One of the main attractions to this performance was the fantastic cast (most of whom had been in various BBC dramas). Catherine Tate and Mark Gatiss starred, to name a few. All the characters were played to perfection.
However, a mess up in the ticket office meant that our school party were all given tickets for that days matinee (which we of course missed). The performance was entirely sold out, so we had to stand at the back. Not ideal, but bearable nonetheless.
The production was good enough to not mind the standing up. It really was superb.

P.S. The National Theatre is the coolest building ever.

A Handful of Dust

I was introduced to Evelyn Waugh's 'masterpiece' for A-level English. Simply put, I'm a fan. It is a unexpectedly emotional novel, depicting the character Tony Last's failed marriage. The ending in particular, with Tony trapped in a remote village in Brazil , doomed to read Dickens until he dies was surprisingly tragic.
Waugh's level of satire is very subtle, but still effective. All the characters (Tony included) are criticised, but in clever ways. The narrator is emotionally detached from the events, describing them bluntly, but the phrasing of key moments shed's light on the immoral nature of English society between the wars.
I've already got 'Put Out More Flags' and 'Decline and Fall' on my reading list.