Categories: music
Tags: Music, Heritage, Protest
Date: 09 January 2010 20:08:54
Today was a day when I engaged in a bit of bonding with Third Party. First off we put together a list of 50 festival type tunes to put together in a playlist for the day. We figured that having a festival day would be a good way to stop getting fed up with the snow. After a chilled morning, (not too chilled - we were in our flat, probably one of the few buildings in England not to have need to put the heating put on this year yet), we headed off with TOH to Gateshead for a spot of live entertainment of the festivating variety.
Riot, Rebellion and Bloody Insurrection is a musical comedy which is a collaboration between Red Ladder theatre company and Chumbawamba. The show was a political history meets panto which was wonderful. It was a delightfully irreverant show based upon a young Luddite woman. Jo Mousley was excellent in the lead role of Elsie Proud, getting a small audience to participate. As with any show like this there was a lot of wonderful modern satire mixed in with historical stuff and it was a real laugh. (Also would like to note how impressed I was with the Sage who were more than happy to swap our seats for the 8pm performace and let us go to the 4pm matinee instead). In short you don't get much better than this, especially not for £5 a ticket which is what it was for concessions.
My only worries whilst watching the show related to the gags about the bishop being into ickle boys and the cheering when the capitalist baddies got murdered and hung. I just can't seem to find jokes based around abuse funny. In terms of the hanging particularly I figure that it is just a short step from wanting to hang the baddies to being ready to becoming one of the flog 'em and hang 'em brigade, (it's just the 'em differ). Probably thinking too deeply about what I do and don't feel comfortable with when I watch that type of thing, but hey.....participation in a crowd without thinking and just giving the expected responses can be one of the most dangerous things known to man.
Amongst the songs there was a v.g. subversion of Time Bomb
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3jw2y-5n58[/youtube]