mostly david ephgrave

Yesterday saw my third time watching Letters Live at Freemasons' Hall, near Covent Garden; I'm beginning to feel like an old hand at it.  It's such a great concept for an event that's amusing, heartrending, yet always entertaining, serving to reiterate the emotive power of the letter as a form of correspondence. They can act as a shortcut into another time; well, the ones they read at Letters Live are; anything I'd write wouldn't ever be.  The show was topped and tailed by Jamie Cullum, who kicked things off with a spot of Fats Waller - 'I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter', obviously - and closed proceedings with a rhythmically outstanding rendition of Ray Charles' 'I Got a Woman', segueing unexpectedly into The Beatles' 'Blackbird'; hearing the latter arranged for piano somehow underlined how beautiful it is.  Referencing recent political developments gave the show an unsettling undercurrent, taking in B...

Tonight, I went to see Letters Live at the Freemasons’ Hall for the second year running ; an experience that was as moving, amusing and enriching as it was last time around (by which I mean it was ). It was great to hear correspondence from people from so many walks of life, and to once again be reminded of how we’re all much the same beneath the surface. Like last year’s show, it was the actors of the company that brought the readings to life the most; breathing truth and sincerity into the thoughts locked behind the words on the page. Yet again, it was an impressive line-up, including Jude Law, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rory Bremner, Juliet Stevenson, Timothy Carlton, Matt Berry and more. The audience were clearly impressed by the celebrity-heavy cast, yet this didn’t steal the thunder from the real stars of the evening: the writers whose lives we took a privileged peek into tonight. The most impressive star - turn of the night for me was the person providing the off-stage ...

Tonight's performance of Letters Live hammered home my deficiencies as a writer.  This may sound negative, but it isn't. Watching the show was a beautifully enriching experience. It served to remind me how powerful, emotive and evocative a letter can be. It can act like a direct channel to the thoughts and feelings of people of the past; more than a list of dates or statistics in a history book will ever do.  It made me mourn the near loss of the medium as a form of communication. You could argue that the email has replaced it - but there's something sterile and emotionless about an existenceless collection of characters on a computer screen, when compared to sheet after sheet of hand-or-typewritten correspondence. It's less tangible, and somehow less valuable for it. It helped that the letters were beautifully read. A whole of host of familiar faces stepped up to the lectern (their bodies were there too), including Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliet Stevenson, T...