'Our revels now are ended'

I started my birthday with breakfast in Betty's (very nice), and ended it in the bar of the West Yorkshire Playhouse, having seen some Shakespeare, so it was all pretty good.

In between, I shopped – I bought the blue walking shoes, and then wandered into lots of jewellery shops trying to find something ‘pretty’, but managed to resist.

For the evening, we had tickets for Northern Broadsides production of The Tempest at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. I like Northern Broadsides, as long as Barrie Rutter controls himself, which he did on this occasion. As a company they have lots of energy and its always a very lively performance in Northern voice (rather than accent) with musical accompaniment.

The Tempest isn’t my favourite Shakespeare, and there was a point a few years ago where I felt I’d seen it enough, for the time being, but I hadn’t seen it since I studied it on my OU Shakespeare course, so I wanted to see it again.

As we walked into the theatre, I reminisced about the last time I saw it at the WYP, when Ian McKellan was playing Prospero and forgot his lines. He had to go off stage and get the book. I remember a lot of bubble wrap too. It wasn’t very good!

This production was much better. It was fast paced, light, funny, and it didn’t dwell on any of the darker elements. I do defy anybody to make the scenes with the shipwrecked lords interesting though. And, as a play, it has some wonderful language in it.