I would still like to beseech you to buy tickets for The Girls Musical by Tim Firth and Gary Barlow. I know I’m going on about it, but you’d all enjoy it, laugh, cry and come out feeling wonderful. But also buy your mum a book, or several.

My daughters’ nightmares all at once: Turing into Your Mother. It’s so funny, that even Mother (me) laughed.

The Mills and Boon Modern Girl’s Guide to Turning into Your Mother by Ada Adverse is a hoot. Horribly astute as well. Read it, and laugh, and then have a good think, and have a gin, a large one. Then another… Please read it. It will do you good.

Turning Into Your Mother by Ada Adverse   Mills and Boon. £6.99

What else?

CORPUS by Rory Clements . Quite different, but just as gripping, and you might well need a bit of a refresher during it. Very tense, not a lot of laughs, but a really good read, and concept.

It’s 1936 – Europe is on the brink of a cataclysm. The Nazis have marched into the Rhineland, in a country house near Cambridge, an elderly couple are discovered brutally murdered. Has it anything to do with the looming abdication of Edward V111 and the unstoppable march of fascism?

Fascinating times, great book. So often they are from this publisher.

CORPUS by Rory Clements. Zaffre.   £12.99

So, CORPUS is the middle of the sandwich.

The Lavender House is the last slice. By Hilary Boyd

Looks lovely, and is another great book, especially for Mother’s Day as its theme is how much duty do we owe to our families as we get older, and how much do we owe it to ourselves to chase happiness?

This really is a conundrum because we’re so much younger when we’re older, these days, if you get my drift. Is it enough to be granny, or should we still be dancing on table tops? Or if not that, surely we have the energy and wits to carve a third phase interesting life?

The Lavender House   Hilary Boyd. Pb £7.99. Quercus.

We’re all busy so maybe this is one to put in your diary before you’re booked solidly through to  summer.

Blush by Charlotte Josephine

Following a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival, the award-winning BLUSH now transfers to Soho Theatre before embarking on a UK Tour. Written by Charlotte Josephine and presented by Snuff Box Theatre, the team behind the sell-out, multi-award winning Bitch Boxer, BLUSH tells five candid stories about image-based sexual abuse and all its many victims. BLUSH is a slap in the face and a call to arms.

Blush feels like powerful and important theatre on an urgently contemporary issue (The Daily Telegraph).

This angry, honest and heartfelt piece seeks to encourage and broaden examination of how the scarcity culture in modern society is fuelling our shame, encouraging the destructive belief systems that we are not enough.

Daniel Foxsmith and Charlotte Josephine (who won a Stage Edinburgh Award for BLUSH) lead this fast-paced production, exploring why society has a desire to shame, what it’s the result of and how we allow this to happen. BLUSH shines a light on the secrets we attempt to keep in the dark, our fears of disconnection and our attempts to be part of the tribe.

The catalyst for the piece was legislation passed in April 2015 to make revenge pornography a criminal act. The law now makes it illegal to disclose a ‘private sexual photograph or film’ without the consent of the person depicted. Many people consent to the creation of an image but having it made public is a very different matter. While revenge pornography may have been the catalyst of Blush, the true focus of the work is shame.

BLUSH is presented in association with Sphinx Theatre and has been supported by the Peggy Ramsay Foundation, Unity Theatre and Arts Council England.

@SnuffBoxTheatre, @sohotheatre, #BLUSHplay

Tuesday 16th May – Tuesday 6th June 2017 
Soho Theatre, 21 Dean Street, London W1D 3NE

Tour Dates:

6th – 10th June . 19th June 20th June 21st June 22nd – 24th June

Tickets are available from www.sohotheatre.com or 020 7478 0100 priced from £10.

Tour venues:

The Bike Shed Theatre, Exeter 162/3 Fore Street, Exeter EX4 3AT

Gulbenkian, Canterbury
Darwin Road, Canterbury CT2 7NZ

MAC, Birmingham
Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH

The Garage, Norwich
14 Chapelfield North, Norwich NR2 1NY

Wardrobe Theatre, Bristol
The White Bear, 133 Street, Bristol BS2 0DF

Regan De Wynter Williams Productions present Sasha Regan’s all-male

The Mikado or The Town of Titipu UK Tour: April – July 2017

Following the highly successful all-male tours of H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance, Sasha Regan returns with the world premiere of the irresistible The Mikado – one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s most famous operettas.

In true topsy –turvy fashion, Gilbert and Sullivan’s inherent humour and timeless tunefulness are married with Regan’s wicked sense of fun. This vibrant production successfully pokes playful fun at British politics and institutions. The crazy storyline takes us to 1950s England where a school camping trip is visiting the far away land of Titipu – a place where flirting is banned on pain of death and where tailors can become Lord High Executioners but cannot cut off another’s head, until they have cut off their own.

Regan’s idea to transform these much-loved classics into all-male productions stems from her own experiences performing Gilbert and Sullivan at a single-sex school. Her shows are now renowned for playing on the humour that can emerge from these gender changes.

Regan comments, Nothing gives me greater pleasure than seeing our work playing in some of the most beautiful theatres our country has to offer. 2017 is going to be a great year for us as we bring a brand new staging to our audiences – it’s beyond exciting.

Rollickingly silly, beautifully sung and imaginatively reframed (Libby Purves – H.M.S. Pinafore 2016).

Sasha was recently awarded the Special Achievement Award at the Off West End Awards 2017 for her contribution to musical theatre.

Tickets are available from individual theatre box office. For more information on tour dates and venues see http://www.allmalemikado.com.

@allmalemikado, #AllMaleMikado

Now look, I am falling on my sword here, tasting wines to recommend for Mother’s Day. You can see that the merest of  tastes grew, much like Topsy, into a couple of glasses of the Sauvignon 2014. OK, not on my own, ‘him indoors’ removed the cork, so felt he was owed something. But this is the first of two wines I consider essential for Mother’s Day. They are both good hearted wines, both worthy of the best mothers in the world.

Max Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon 2014. The label says this red wine is from old vines grown in the gravel soils of the Valle de Aconcagua in Chile. It is a full and aromatic wine and its barrel-ageing causes a silkiness. Get them to cook lamb or beef with this, as it’s your day off. I have to say I did a double take at old vines, and feel it entirely suitable for an old but good ‘un of a grandma like me.

RRP £14.75 available from Waitrose and others.

Now for the Villa Maria Reserve Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. I love New Zealand wines. Clean and full of flavour as a rule. Is this? From the Wairau Valley, Marlborough this has been awarded the designation ‘Reserve’ which is reserved for wines of exceptional quality.

Indeed it deserves this accolade. This is bursting with the ripe fruit characters found in this sub region. Lovely fruit nose, and leaves a entirely satisfactory flavour of … gooseberry I think. Great stuff.

So once you have been fed and watered, how about unwrapping the gifts?

I like The Flower Year – an adult colouring book created by Leila Duly

It is hard backed, and a celebration of the botanical seasons. You could work through it month by month, or just pick and choose. I have been thinking of reworking the back garden so my thoughts are full of what to plant, once it’s dug. Quite who is to dig, is still open to discussion.

It is from the publisher that brought you Secret Garden and Enchanted Forest. Leila Duly is a textile print designer, and her work is inspired by old Victorian etchings. It follows her debut colouring book: Floribunda: A Flower Colouring Book.

The Flower year: A Colouring Book, pub 13th March hb £9.99

The Idea of You by Amanda Prowse

Inspired by her own miscarriages Prowse writes a novel around the subject.

With her 40^th birthday approaching and the biological clock ticking Lucy Carpenter’s life seems set firm for happiness. Until the miscarriage. As the stresses of work, grief, uncertainty take their toll on her marriage the final straw seems to be the arrival of her step-daughter to live with them. She is adolescent (say no more). Is this the end of all Lucy has, or a new beginning? There will be lots of step-mother’s out there, who can relate to this novel. And Mother’s Day is for them too, isn’t it?

The Idea of You by Amanda Prowse. Pub 21 March. pb £8.99 and eBook £3.98

Vietnam Eye – Contemporary Vietnamese Art

Edited by Serenella Ciclitera

 Wave this book in front of your family as Mother’s Day looms or buy it for yourself – anytime – if you are at all interested in art and history

I say ‘book’ but Vietnam Eye – Contemporary Vietnamese Art – is a reference work highlighting one of the most fascinating contemporary art scenes in an area that has known war, and radical change – from a closed door policy to an era of globalisation.

The book showcases the work of seventy-five outstanding contemporary Vietnamese artists working across a variety of established and new media, from painting to sculpture, from photography to video.

Some artists’ work I didn’t like, but explored with interest, others, in particular, gave me pause for thought in this complex world.

A Partition of Chance by Tran Trong Vu as shown is interesting. Tran Trong Vu does not create paintings to be an end in themselves but as a means to seek his place as an artist outside the contemporary artist system. For me, it is a painting of stillness and repetition into which one can import one’s own theme.

Nguyen Trong Minh reflects the artist’s disappointment with the education system of his time, in which any deviation marked one as an outsider. The very stillness of the images, the rigidity, is thought provoking. I have just reviewed The Outsider, Frederick Forsyth’s memoir, and his life as an outsider was different: joyous, creative.

This work of Nguyen Trong Minh’s is equally creative, but internalised. For Minh the world needs to be paused, clarified in black and white, distilled. But into what: into work that gives him the ability to respond to life effectively. It made me want to see some of them in the ‘flesh’ but perhaps I can:

Vietnam Eye is published in anticipation of a major exhibition at London’s Saatchi Gallery in September 2017 so we must find the time to visit, having perused the catalogue.

Serenella Ciclitira has an honours degree in art history from Trinity College, Dublin and has worked extensively with artists and galleries throughout the world. Along with her husband David Ciclitira, she is the co-founder of Korean Eye and a member of its curatorial board.

Vietnam Art – contemporary Vietnamese art: pb £38.00 (amazon.co.uk)

Time to start thinking what we might like. I say we, because you never know, my kids could be reading this.

I have just read a belter of a novel out in hardback on 9^th March, so put it on your list and do not forget.

The Little Theatre by the Sea by Rosanna Ley has a jacket which yells – sunshine. It covers adult daughter, and ‘life begins again’ parents.

Faye has just completed her degree in interior design, and is tempted to house sit for friends in Sardinia. Somehow or other, she is hooked into designing a theatre. How? Ah…

Her parents, toddling about in Dorset are feeling that they, too, could stretch their wings, and fly. Is there going to be a meeting of minds, or a clash? Give it to your mum and she can find out.

Much more serious but fascinating. Couldn’t put it down:

The Making of India: The untold story of British Enterprise by Kartar Lalvani

Not a beach read, let’s be honest, but a balanced and fair look at the British in India, a mile away from the banging and crashing and blaming that so often accompanies any look back at the British in the continent.

Lalvani explores how the subcontinent benefited in many ways, starting at the beginning, in the seventeenth century and moving on through the colonial rule. He discusses how the British unified and restored a fragmented country of many kingdoms. Of course, the Brits were not without fault, but this history looks at the institutional, political, and civil benefits embedded by us. Fascinating.

How about a frankly scary thriller by Sunday Times bestselling author of I am Death.

The Caller by Chris Carter is not one to read in bed, tell Mum. On the other hand, if she starts it in the afternoon there’ll be no tea for anyone, and she just won’t want to put it down after her Horlicks, or maybe she’s one of us, and we’re talking wine.

Tanya Kaitlin steps out of her shower prior to bed. The phone rings. The video call request comes from her best friend. Tanya takes the call. No, no, no. Because the nightmare begins.

Who wants to see images of their best friend gagged and bound to a chair in her own living room? Tanya doesn’t but must continue to watch or the predator will come for her next.

Not sure mum will be keen on answering a phone again, or flirting with social media. But she won’t be able to put this one down until she knows what’s what.

On a lighter note.

Cathy Kelly made me laugh in Secrets of a Happy Marriage.

 With echoes of the aga saga which I gather is now a politically incorrect term, (for heaven’s sake – so use it I will), it is amusing too.

It’s all about a special birthday party. I had one of those, and arrived at the pub with my age roared out loud and clear on banners for all to know. It was not my best moment, as I have always skirted round the truth. Retribution I suppose.

Of course, with generations of Brannigans congregating in Cathy Kelly’s clever novel, some secrets are bound to emerge, some cracks in relationships might become hard to disguise, but… but… will something happen to bring the sunshine out on the whole proceedings? Ah… Give it to Mum and then borrow it and you’ll find out.

The Little Theatre by the Sea by Rosanna Ley. Quercus. pub 9^th March. hb £19.99 and pb 1st June.

The Making of India by Kartar Lalvani Bloomsbury hb £25.00

The Caller by Chris Carter by Simon and Schuster. hb £12.99

Secrets of a Happy Marriage by Cathy Kelly Hb and ebook. Orion 9 March. £14.99

The Lock In by Joseph Cullen at The Vaults, London SE1

“ The atmosphere fizzes as people jostle to find the right theatre space…”

Waterloo Station is right above your head, but you wouldn’t know it – apart from the odd grumble of a train – because The Vaults, deep beneath the station, are just as busy. If not busier.

It is gloomy down here, the lighting reminiscent of a futuristic film, but there is a buzz. The atmosphere fizzes as people jostle to find the right theatre space: Pit, Cage, Crescent, Studio, Cavern, Jazz Bar, Network Theatre. Performances occur simultaneously in all the spaces and there is a frisson of controlled panic about the place.

We found the bar easily enough, but the queue was annoying. Funny how no one seemed to be aware there is another bar directly above – and it was empty! We could smell the food of the restaurant, but had no idea where it was. The Vaults have created a whole evening for the discerning public – a bit of theatre/music/comedy, a drink or three, a place to eat.

The Lock In was one hour long – getting kicked out of the space so another performance could step in. Its slot being 6.15-7.15pm. It’s a veritable Edinburgh Festival down here…

We were ushered into a wriggly line outside The Pit and, finally, the doors opened. A little confusion – adding to the event – as we sought a free bench. Then the brilliant music stopped to allow the ‘theatre’ to begin. It is immersive and in your face: it is St. Patrick’s Day and we’re all locked in the pub. Tipsy and over-friendly Eamonn tells us the forgotten Irish tale of Niall and the Nine Hostages, using members of the audience to represent a variety of characters. His journey leads him inevitably to more drink until, by the end, inebriated, he plays and sings with the band.

[Emmy Stonelake, Andy Burse, Rory Quinn and Ian Horgan in rehearsal]

Eamonn, played by Ian Horgan, is affable enough, but somehow lacked the twinkle-in-the-eye of the drunk Irish storyteller that he was aiming to be. His many lapses in concentration led him to openly admit he had no idea what came next – at one point asking the band to play a song to cover, which of course they did.

It all added to the rough and ready occasion. Because, at the end of the day, who cares? Sinead O’Callaghan’s relaxed direction allows it to be funny and informative. The sometimes improvised banter between the musicians and Eamonn felt genuine enough. Special praise here to Andy Burse, playing Dave, on percussion. His persistent, dim-witted but heartfelt interruptions were perfect. The aforementioned band also including poster boy Rory Quinn, Emmy Stonelake and Eddy Massarella created a wonderfully vibrant live Irish sound in the bricked and cavernous archway.

Over The Limit Theatre have been at The Vault Festival all week, presenting a Celtic Season. The Witch’s Mark and Siren being their other two shows. One has a feeling that it has all been thrown together at short notice, which brings with it a certain charm and energy. But it does make one wonder how brilliant it could all be with just a little more precision.

Venue: The Vaults, Waterloo Vaults, Leake Street, SE1 7NN

Venue Contact: www.thevaults.london

Over The Limit Theatre

Contact: Oran Doyle, oran.overthelimit@gmail.com or 07533431919

Facebook: /OLTTheatre

Twitter: @OTLTheatre

Instagram: @overthelimittheatre

This is an exciting book. Whether you are an artist, an art historian or simply an art lover, you will find this beautifully produced volume absorbing. The author, Stella Paul, guides the reader into thinking about colour in its own right as well as part of an art work. We are led into the history, symbolism, science, and psychology of colour by reference to images from a range of time periods.

The result is a fresh focus on painting. The viewer’s understanding is sharpened and I found a new way of seeing images I thought I knew well.

Chromaphilia has been produced to a high standard. In a book about colour, image quality is crucial and I wasn’t disappointed. Stella Paul’s writing is full of ideas, some of which are complex, but she has a gift for clear expression and the illustrations work hand in hand with the text. It’s a book both for reading and for dipping into. The trouble is, I keep dipping in and surfacing a long time later. The housework is suffering. Too bad.

Chromaphilia                      Pub. Phaidon     £29.95