To celebrate the launch of the Sister Act Original London Cast Recording album, the show’s glamourous star Patina Miller and her singing sisters will be performing live and signing copies of the album at the HMV flagship store on Oxford Street on Monday 27th July at 1pm.
They all have amazing voices and the songs are brilliant, so it should be a real treat. Patina Miller and the wonderful Sheila Hancock will also be signing copies of the album in the Dress Circle on Monmouth Street on Saturday 1st August at 12.00pm.
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Birgit Vosper and Vanessa McClure report.
a-ha kicked off their eagerly anticipated Friday night iTunes set with The Sun Always Shines on TV and Morton Harkett was on top form. Displaying none of his occasional diva-like antics, he appeared unfazed by cries of ‘Get yer shirt off!’ and ‘I want to have your babies!’’. The whole band looked like they were having a great time, no doubt sensing the rampant enthusiasm of the audience.
The set was varied and featured new songs plus their greatest hits. James Bond theme The Living Daylights became a gigantic sing-a-long and even some of the men in the crowd (who had probably been dragged along to The Roundhouse by their partners) couldn’t hold back and joined in.
There wasn’t a bad song in the set and choosing highlights is hard, but if pushed, we’d give special mention to Stay on These Roads, the emotive Summer Moved On (complete with a bravura holding of the longest note in the history of the Top 40 which raised much applause), rousing new single Foot of the Mountain, and the new album title track The Bandstand. And of course, the ubiquitous, roof-raising encore Take on Me and Train of Thought.
It’s not often that you find religious radicalism, comedy and the artist formerly known as Prince in the same sentence – let alone the same play. But award-winning author Hanif Kureishi has managed it in The Black Album.
The new production is Kureishi’s stage adaptation of his own novel, also called The Black Album, which takes its name from Prince’s unreleased but widely bootlegged album of 1987.
The music theme continues with a energetic soundtrack from Sister Bliss from Faithless. Who better to do the music for a play about religion than a member of the group who once sang God Is A DJ? The mix of 80s classics had me tapping my feet as soon as I entered the National Theatre.
The scene is set 20 years ago in 1989 – the year that a fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie for his controversial book The Satanic Verses. The play explorers the religious tensions of the era, the repercussions of which are still felt today, through Shahid Hasan (played with energy by Jonathan Bonnici), a young Asian boy leaving leafy Sevenoaks to study in the bright lights of London.
The Black Album deals with some pretty heavy issues: religious fanatism, drugs, racial identity, sex and violence, yet at times it felt more like a comedy sitcom. Family dramas were peppered with comic insights into Pakistani domestic life, Shahid’s brother Chili (Robert Mountford) was like a flamboyant Boycie from Only Fools And Horses, and there was even a starring role from an aubergine pakora!
Like the multi-named, cross-dressing Prince, the characters each juggle different identities. Watching the play, the hardest part was not deciding who to believe, but trying to figure out what they believed.
I’m off to the upcoming talk on 10 August with Hanif Kurieshi and the play’s director Jatinder Verma in search of enlightenment!
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