Darlings, you were WONDERFUL

Last night, Mark and I went to see Caryl Churchill's Serious Money at Birmingham Repertory Theatre. It's a great venue - all seats are good seats. The cast captured the look and feel of the 80s brilliantly, and almost all of them had appeared in The Bill at some point, which always pleases me mightily.

It's a full-on attack on the greed of the finance industry - in verse. Government, brokers, bankers and entrepreneurs plot and compete to defraud each other and to wreck the economy and ordinary peoples' lives in pursuit of short-term, personal profit - even sex palls in comparison with the thrill of the chase. If you want a funny, crude, incisive guide to why we're all going to be poor for the next few years - see this play.

Which brings me to my major point. Some of you dear readers are under 26 years old. I've suggested a kind of slow motion culture club. How about starting with free theatre tickets? It's a government scheme which theatres all over England have joined, offering 'free tickets to see any show' every Friday night at the Rep and loads of other places, until March 2011. So you could see Serious Money, or anything else. Here's the site:

A Night Less Ordinary

or

Birmingham Rep and look for 'a night less ordinary'.

Type in the area you want to go to and follow the simple instructions. I shall be polishing my fake ID in preparation.