More Suffolk Culture In Aldeburgh

It was time for another bit of Suffolk culture on Sunday afternoon when we drove to Aldeburgh for a show in the Jubilee Hall. We had time to kill before the show so we went and bought some books at the excellent Aldeburgh Bookshop and had a good simple lunch at the Cragg Sisters Tearoom.

The entertainment, Bottom's Dream, was billed as variety show and there was certainly plenty of variety in an eclectic mix of music, folk story telling, sea shanties, extracts from Shakespeare, Falsetto singing from Andrew Watts and a show stopping dance from 'ballerina' Madame Galina aka Iestyn Edwards. It was a wonderfully enjoyable afternoon with a first class cast that included well known film and TV actors including Gemma Jones, Miranda Raison, Annie Firbank and Clive Merrison. I particularly enjoyed fisherman Paul Strowger's beautiful rendition of the sea shanties. His strong Suffolk accent added a perfect touch of authenticity to the songs. The stories and play extracts were beautifully performed and we ended the afternoon with one of my favourite monologues - Puck's If We Shadows Have Offended. Great stuff.

Now that we've seen all of the best picture Oscar nominations we may be going to the cinema a little less than the twice a week we've been doing recently. This week's choice was Tarantino's latest The Hateful Eight. We went to the super Riverside cinema in Woodbridge and opted for their Fish And Flicks deal which includes the film and fish and chips (or other fish dishes) in their excellent restaurant. 

We both love Tarantino's films although I don't feel that this is one of his best. It's a sort of Reservoir Dogs meets Kill Bill in a western setting. There's almost a touch of an Agatha Christie whodunnit when the eight unsavoury characters holed up by a blizzard in a trading post start to drop like flies. It has Tarantino's trademark chapters, cartoonish violence and black humour and is lifted by fabulous performances from Samuel L Jackson and Kurt Russell as bounty hunters. It's a long film and certainly worth going to see but if you have a choice between this, The Revenant. Spotlight, The Big Short or Carol I would go for one of those first.

We're back at The Riverside on Monday for the premiere of the collaborative film With Love From Suffolk. We made a (very small) contribution to this crowd funded project and we're really looking forward to seeing the result.