Musings, if you will.

I can normally only write when I’ve drank a lot of coffee and dipped a lot of biscuits in said coffee but the current weather is making me switch off from anything remotely warm. I’m currently on week four of being off sick from work and having had an operation twelve days ago which has resulted in an infection following that operation, I’m really struggling with the heat.

Actually, I’m really struggling with everything right now. I hadn’t driven or been in my car for three weeks and when I finally ventured behind the wheel, I discovered a bag containing a half-drunk fruit smoothie in it. Let’s just say pineapple, banana and coconut repeatedly warmed to the point of boiling in a place with a distinct lack of air absolutely stinks.

Because I’ve been poorly, I’m bored. When I realised I was going to be off sick for a long time, I splashed out on a load of original British drama box sets which were polished off within a week. Now that the weather is glorious, everyone is rejoicing and firing up the barbecues whilst I huddle in front of my fan and sob because I have a temperature from my infection and the heat is killing me.

I’ve also resorted to type and started re-watching Friends. I say “re-watching”. What I actually mean is I broke my usual comfort blanket of watching the show over and over on Comedy Central while I was watching my box sets and now I’ve gone back to the norm. During one of my many freezing cold baths lately, I read an article on Buzz Feed about Friends and what the writer described as the “catalogue of errors” presented by the show.

While I don’t necessarily agree that the show hosts a “catalogue of errors”, I do agree that there are several mistakes, mostly continuity based, which I’ve picked up on over the years. I’m not so bothered about the really basic filming errors, some of which resurface on social media every few years. These errors range from the apartment door number changing to a different actress filling in for Monica when the camera isn’t focused on her to the actress who played Joey’s agent, Estelle, also multi rolling as a midwife who delivers Ben.

The majority of these tiny errors were most likely teething problems, which arose from the show being very new and the fact that the writers, directors and producers had no idea just how popular the show would be. As a writer, I’m more interested in how the storyline itself has crumbled with too many tiny errors.  Plot holes, if you will. How can you write something and forget you wrote it? Hell, I can still quote my way through a play I wrote six years ago. 

Maybe I’m just sad. Anyway, I digress.

Firstly, let’s take a look at the age of the characters. Ross and Monica are brother and sister, therefore we know there is at least nine months age difference between them. Yet if we think about the flashback episodes, we see Ross and Chandler at college while Monica and Rachel are still at high school. Therefore, I think it’s pretty safe to say there’s at least one year between the Gellar siblings, although it’s most likely more. So, in the episode where Rachel turns thirty, why are all the Friends aged thirty (Phoebe aside) with Rachel seemingly being the youngest?

In fact, if we cast our minds back to the earlier series, Ross says he is 29 years old on three separate occasions: in series three, four and five. Ironically, his birthday changes throughout the series. When Gunther asks Rachel when her birthday is, Ross chimes in with his birthday, which is in December. But when Joey and Ross are in the hospital after Ross punches Joey, he says his birthday is in October.

Ironically, the same thing happens with Phoebe. In series three, when talking to Frank Jnr, Phoebe says that her birthday is February 16^th (I remember so specifically as this is my sister’s birthday), yet in the ninth series, Phoebe’s birthday dinner is on Halloween.

Similarly, in the episode where Monica fights for the bargain wedding dress, she says her wedding is being held on May 15^th. We know that on the morning of her wedding, Rachel discovers she is pregnant. Presumably, she is around four to five weeks at this point, perhaps a little further on maybe. It’s fair to assume that Rachel conceived in April, roughly, which would mean her due date would be approximately January. That’s all well and good until we remember that when Rachel was towards the end of her pregnancy, she and Ross were attending a hospital appointment and she says “it is 100 degrees outside”. Really? In New York in January?

Also, on that note, when Rachel and Phoebe met Dr Green for dinner and he grills Rachel about his first grandchild “not being a bastard”, she reassures him by saying she has a wedding booked for February 2^nd. So, was the phantom wedding intended for when Emma was a month old? Or was this a mystical pregnancy that lasted a year and a half?

Speaking of Rachel’s pregnancy, when she’s in hospital after giving birth and Monica spies the engagement ring allegedly given to her by Joey, alarm bells should’ve rang for Monica as this is the same bloody ring that Ross used to propose to Emily. Perhaps she just didn’t recognise it, although she grew particularly attached to this specific ring and put Emily off wearing it by informing her that it was inside a duck’s colon for days. Or maybe their grandmother had several expensive looking engagement rings knocking around, despite the fact that when she moved to America, she had just the one ring and “the clothes on her back”, implying that she was very poor. Ah well. Maybe Monica is just forgetful.

Let’s move back to Ross for a second. In the first series, the guys make quite a big deal out of the fact that Ross has only slept with one woman: Carol. Yet, if we fast forward to the Thanksgiving episode featuring Brad Pitt, we discover that he in fact slept with an elderly librarian when he was in college. As he met Carol in college, we can only assume that either he was dishonest in the first series (possible – he seemed embarrassed when people found out about Mrs Altman so maybe he lied to avoid losing face) or he cheated on Carol, the woman he was with for eight years, married and had a child with.

If it’s the latter, it takes a whole new glance at Ross as a person. Sleeping with the girl from the copy place was meant to be a one-off thing that was so out of character for Ross but if he repeatedly cheats on every significant partner he’s had, sorry but it makes him a wanker. The alternative is that the writers forgot about the earlier confession that he had only slept with Carol and therefore, it falls into the ever-increasing category of “continuity errors”.

Still on the “Rossatron”, it’s crazy how throughout the series, he maintains that he has an allergy to shellfish, yet he has no objectons to gobbling down those crab cakes when the shit hits the fan.

Moving swiftly forwards to Rachel and Chandler. How many times did those guys meet “for the first time”? We know they met at the Geller’s during Thanksgiving on two consecutive years but we also see them meet at a college party where they end up kissing, yet apparently are totally unaware of each other. Let’s not forget that they meet again “for the first time” in the first episode where Rachel runs out on her wedding. It’s possible that as time has passed, she wouldn’t know who Chandler was (maybe) but then to back up this third meeting by saying in her potential maid of honour speech that she met Chandler for the first time when he was a “twenty-five-year-old”. 

No. No, you didn’t.

Speaking of Rachel, her surname repeatedly changes how it’s spelled throughout the series. We see her name listed as Rachel Green in the credits to the show, which is corroborated when Rachel has Rachel Green written on the top of Emma’s first birthday cake. However, it’s spelled as Greene on her office door at Bloomingdales and also on her invitation to Ross’ wedding.

Let’s move on to Ross and Monica’s parents: Jack and Judy Geller. In the episode where Jack gives Monica his Porsche, we hear that there were suspicions that Judy couldn’t conceive. The doctors then referred to Ross, who was conceived unexpectedly, as a “medical marvel”. This is also mentioned in another episode where Ross explains that doctors thought “she was baron”. Yet when Chandler and Monica meet Jack and Judy for lunch following their engagement and Jack talks about how he proposed to Judy, he explains that he’d gotten Judy pregnant and he still wasn’t sure how it happened. Okay. So far, so good. But then Judy says “your dog used my diaphragm as a squeeze toy”.

Hang on a minute. If medical practitioners believed she had no hope of getting pregnant, why did she use contraception? Without going into too much detail, I’m aware that certain methods of contraception also act as something else e.g. the contraceptive pill can help with periods etc. But a diaphragm is a complicated little bugger that you have to put in and out of yourself each time you want to have sex. Which would imply that, as the diaphragm was Judy’s preferred method of protection, she perhaps hadn’t been told she wasn’t able to conceive. Which means the whole “medical marvel” gag was total bullshit.

Bearing the Gellers in mind, remember little Ben Geller? Sorry, Ben Geller-Willitt-Bunch, to be exact. He didn’t turn up to his own father’s wedding, yet was present at both his mother’s and his aunt and uncle’s. Now, I have my own theory on this. Ross’ wedding was in London, therefore a long way to travel for a young child. He would’ve needed accompanying and presumably the person to do that would be his parent and maybe it was just a bit awkward for either Carol or Susan to come along to Ross’ wedding, not to mention costly. So why couldn’t Ross be responsible for him? Or, failing that, his own grandparents?

In fact, Ben’s role in the series deteriorated massively. In the earlier series, he was at Ross’ apartment – and even Monica’s apartment – all the time. Ross had him overnight and even begged Carol and Susan to let him have Ben for longer than just one night. Yet towards the end of the series, we hardly see him at all and we never once see Ben meeting his younger sister, Emma.

Right. Monica and Chandler. When Monica puts the Thanksgiving turkey on her head and dances for Chandler, he laughs and unexpectedly tells her that he loves her. It’s clear that this is the first time, as Monica is astonished and says “you said you love me. I can’t believe it”. Yet later on when Phoebe has rumbled their budding relationship, Chandler declares his love for Monica by saying “I’m in love with Monica. That’s right. I love her. I. LOVE. HER”. 

Yet Monica, overhearing this conversation from where she’d hid in the bathroom, is astonished once again that Chandler has said he loves her. 

I’m willing to let this one slide though, as it’s clear that the turkey time was obviously blurted out unexpectedly and the time with Phoebe, he obviously intended to say it.

Moving on to Joey: did anybody notice that the amount of his sisters kept changing? He tells Chandler that his mother “gave birth to six kids”, yet in another episode he says he has seven sisters, which would mean there are actually eight of them. I guess it’s possible that two of the kids were adopted, which means Mrs Tribbani did only give birth to six kids, but it seems a little farfetched and unlikely.

It also annoyed me that when Phoebe announced her engagement, Joey proposes a toast but doesn’t know the name of her fiancé. Which would be all well and good – well, no, it would be completely crap if your best mate didn’t know your fiancé’s name – except Joey was the one who introduced them to each other! Admittedly, Joey didn’t actually know Mike as it was a total long shot that there was someone named Mike in close proximity to him when he shouted out “Mike?” in the coffee house but evidently, he did know his name. He’d even been on holiday with Joey, for goodness sake.

This one isn’t so much a continuity error but more of a complaint. Personally, it felt that the writers grew tired of thinking of interesting storylines and character development for Joey towards the end of the show, as his character went from “dim but sweet” to “bordering on serious learning difficulties”. Come off it. A fully-grown man who, when presented with very basic French read out in one word sentences, repeats gobbledegook back? It was cringeworthy.

And in series nine, he explains that he can’t use air quotations correctly, which is weird because he uses them throughout the series. Example: when Rachel is grilling him over Monica and Chandler’s new secret relationship, he says “Monica and Chandler are making love” and uses air quotations accurately. At times, it felt as though the writers were so focused on Ross and Rachel towards the end that Joey’s character was so dumbed down that it became unfunny and insulting towards the character.

On this note, I felt that the writers lacked inspiration with Phoebe too. She went from being a ditsy hippie who cleansed people’s auras and gave a huge sum of money to a homeless lady (not to mention being a surrogate for her brother) to being downright insulting and nasty. “Really? Chandler?” and “Don’t even get me started on Chandler” springs to mind. If one of my best friends was so unnecessarily rude about my husband – who also happens to be one of their best friends – I’d cut her out.

In line with this, can we just talk about Phoebe’s dismissive attitude when Rachel confesses that she kissed another girl when she was in college? Phoebe is so convinced that it just “isn’t like” Rachel, which is odd considering Phoebe watched Rachel kiss Monica for a whole minute in a bid to win back their apartment.

Finally, the biggest curveball of them all – Erica unexpectedly giving birth to twins. It’s ludicrous, outrageous perhaps, that a woman would be carrying twins without realising it, unless of course she’s opted out of having any ultrasounds. But we know that Erica did have an ultrasound that Monica and Chandler gazed at proudly. Come on. You’re telling me that a medical expert who performs ultrasounds day in, day out, didn’t pick up on two babies on that scan? Particularly because they were clearly aware that Erica was carrying twins, as Erica explains that a midwife told her that “both heartbeats are really strong”.

The only possible explanation is that her initial ultrasound was very early on when perhaps the second baby couldn’t be detected and that, as she’d decided to give the baby up for adoption, she chose not to have any more scans? Possible but very unlikely.

Regardless, I will still continue to watch Friends and love it for all of eternity. It’s quite literally the best comfort blanket a girl can have.

Goodnight Mister Tom by Encore Productions 31/05/2017

About three months ago, my grandma sent me a text message (all in capital letters because she is yet to discover that each message doesn’t need to be, which gives the distinct impression that she’s yelling at you) asking me to pop over. Over a cup of tea, she asked me to sort out the invitations to her upcoming eightieth birthday party, which of course I agreed to do. It was at this point that she made it clear she didn’t want any presents: “I’ve already got everything I want and need”. Instead, she asked people to make donations to the National Autistic Society.

Although I heard this – and subsequently created her invitations online – I also knew deep down that I would still buy her tickets to a play. In the last couple of years, my grandma and her partner of twenty-seven years, Frank, have become increasingly difficult to buy for. There’s only so many Christmases and birthdays you can buy an elderly couple bottles of Radox, novelty socks and a bunch of flowers.

It was about eighteen months ago that my mum suggested instead of buying them useless crap that they don’t want or need, we would take them to see a play. Me and my mum go to the theatre as often as we can (I’ve just asked her to work out how many productions we’ve been to in the last twelve months alone and there’s been twenty-one between us), but my grandparents don’t drive which immediately limits the amount of plays or shows they can see. So far, we’ve seen “Paddy” at the Parr Hall, “Foster and Allen” at the Parr Hall, “The Dubliners” at the Parr Hall and “Once a Catholic” at the Brindley in Runcorn.

My grandma is in a wheelchair and as she has COPD, she relies on an oxygen tank to breathe at all times, so we’ve had some tricky experiences in getting her in and out of theatres safely. We actually had quite a bad experience at the Brindley, which slightly dampened our evening watching “Once a Catholic” (although it was still fantastic), where there were no available disabled seats. We had been advised that the venue can only offer eight disabled seats but she would be able to be wheeled in to sit in a normal seat before the wheelchair was taken outside to be left in a corridor.

When we arrived at the Brindley, we were told that this wasn’t true and wheelchairs weren’t allowed inside unless the wheelchair user had a designated disabled seat. This meant my grandmother, who cannot walk unaided, had to be carried to and from her seat, which she found rather upsetting.

Last night, on 31^st May 2017, we went to see “Goodnight Mister Tom” at the Pyramid in Warrington. The performance was from local theatre company, Encore Productions, with chairman, Nick Cupit, overseeing the company and the production directed by Kit Phillips. Tickets cost £12 for adults and £10 for concessions, so for four of us, it cost £44 – not too bad at all, I thought. Doors opened at 7pm and the play started half an hour later. Following our “Once a Catholic” experience, we’d booked the tickets by going into the Pyramid a few months back and explaining that we needed a disabled access seat and three accompanying seats.

The staff at the Pyramid could not be faulted, so once we arrived (and found a disabled parking space immediately adjacent to the venue, which was really handy for wheeling my grandma in and out), we let a member of staff know we’d arrived and she advised us that our seats were on the second row with reserved signs on each seat. It was possibly the smoothest transition we’ve ever had in a venue, as we sat down quite comfortably after buying two programmes (£2 each) and a few raffle tickets, which my grandma went on to win!

It’s worth pointing out here that Goodnight Mister Tom is one of my all-time favourite books. I read it in primary school, then we studied it in Year Seven for an exam and my English teacher was at a loss for what to do with me, as the class were tripping up on some of the local folk’s way of speaking whereas I could quote passages from the book by heart. I like Michelle Magorian’s way of describing everything so vividly. I remember reading an interview with her years ago and she said Goodnight Mister Tom was produced after exploring the colours of the rainbow following a writing class. She wrote one story for each colour and Goodnight Mister Tom was the product of the colour green.

I won’t go into huge amounts of detail about the storyline itself in case anyone reads this who is going to see the production and doesn’t want any spoilers but if you aren’t familiar with it, I’ll just give a quick rundown. The story takes place at the start of the Second World War, when children from inner city areas were evacuated to safer places, such as the countryside. They were taken without parents to live with kind hearted strangers, often for months and even years at a time, despite some children being very young. The Goodnight Mister Tom story centres around one particular evacuee, William Beech, and the elderly man who took him in, Tom Oakley, and the unlikely bond formed between them.

As with any production featuring child actors, there were a number of children alternating the role of each character. Last night was the opening night for this particular performance and the child actors involved were Jack Radcliffe, Finlay Scott, Erin Eaves, Daniel Wilson, Poppy Williams and Callum Eaves.

In all honesty, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would it be a musical, where the local folk sang about “letting the townies stay” and would William express his frustration with being unable to read and write through contemporary dance? Well, no. It wasn’t a musical, although there were some terrific wartime songs played to fill the silences between scene changes, which my grandparents in particular really enjoyed.

As with any production involving children, I’m always a little dubious in case there are any problems. I’ve just been to see Billy Elliot at the Liverpool Empire and the children in that were phenomenal so the children from Encore Productions had a lot to live up to.

Ironically, there was a scene where the character Zach danced but it was in context and very funny. Finlay Scott, playing Zach, had an insurmountable energy throughout the performance as he played a very upbeat version of Zach, not unlike the version in the film adaptation. He was continually funny and without a doubt the comic relief of the play. (Poor Finlay had to wear a thick woolly jumper throughout the performance and I dread to think how hot he must’ve been under the stage lights but he battled through like a pro.)

Jack Radcliffe played the lost and lonely William and he portrayed an admirable performance. In fact, and I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t mean it, I think he gave the original William, Nick Robinson, from the film a run for his money. Jack was cute in a “I’ve been uprooted from my home and dumped in a place I can’t even pronounce the name of” sort of way but not too cute that the story couldn’t organically progress as the audience fell in love his with innocence and enjoyed watching him make friends for the first time in his life.

The programme was slightly disappointing in the sense that there was no information about the actors themselves – where they’re from, other productions they’ve been in etc – although I suspect that may have been because of safeguarding issues, which is completely understandable, but I would’ve been interested to know how old Jack is. I’d hedge my bets at saying he’s about eight or nine years old. In the car on the way home, all four of us were saying how blown away we were by his ability to learn, remember and deliver all of his lines without faltering once – and I’ve seen many a professional adult actor forget their lines on stage.

Although a non-speaking role, I cannot write a review on last night’s performance without talking about the wonderful Ewan Schooler, who orchestrated the puppet of Sammy the dog. Ewan was in virtually every scene (and the scenes where Sammy wasn’t present, Ewan doubled up as a school child or multi rolled as a civilian) and, similarly to Timone in the stage version of the Lion King, Ewan controlled the puppet whilst being on stage at all times himself. The extraordinary young performer was bent double for ninety percent of the production (I hope his back isn’t too sore today) and after a while, I almost forgot he was there because Sammy was so convincing, life like and endearing.

As we applauded the cast at the end of the performance, Ewan got a particularly loud and enthusiastic cheer – someone even whistled – and it couldn’t have been more well deserved. I said to my mum that it takes a special child to accept a non-speaking role in a production where his friends are all line learning, yet he was pivotal to the play. I don’t think we would’ve loved the growing bond between Tom and William without the faithful Sammy. Also, I’ve just scanned my eyes over the programme again, and I can see that Ewan doesn’t share his role with any other actor. Ewan, if you’re reading this, bravo.

In fact, all the children were experts at delivering lines and moving about on stage. Unlike some performances featuring children, their roles hadn’t been “watered down” so to speak, in order for the roles to be easier to grasp or perform. I can’t begin to imagine how overwhelming it must’ve felt for them to be learning lines, blocking scenes and following direction presumably after school and at weekends, in between revising for their SATs and doing their homework. Kudos to Kit Phillips for his exceptional directional skills. It’s no easy task directing children (and I worked in a children’s theatre company for twelve months, so I know it can be hard) but I was very impressed by how polished the performance was.

Moving on to the adults: Bryan Higgins was Mister Tom. He actually was him. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the late great John Thaw and thought his performance in the film was wonderful but – and this is a bold claim – I thought Bryan may have been better. He was just so likeable and his accent was spot on. He had a nice way with the children and he was funny in parts that I didn’t expect. Again, I won’t spoil the plot, but at the end of the play when there was a particularly happy moment between Tom and William, I had a lump in my throat and my eyes started to burn.

The other adult actors – Dawn Lloyd, Kayleigh Finch, Hayley Northey, Jane Newey, Jimmy Dean, Danni Steel, Rose Higgins and Chele Dean – were all great too but I particularly enjoyed Jane Newey’s performance as local busybody and mother to the five thousand Mrs Fletcher and Dawn Lloyd’s chilling performance of William’s mentally ill mother, Mrs Beech.

As for the production, parts of the storyline were particularly challenging and prior to the show, I was genuinely wondering whether they would skirt over some of the more upsetting scenes. No. I needn’t have worried. Just like Encore didn’t shy away from having a dog as one of the main characters, they didn’t shy away from embracing the difficulties faced during a war. Encore tackled the topics of mental health, abuse and death tactfully and I was very, very impressed.

Any downsides? The only things I can think of are very small but I’m always very honest when reviewing any episode, production or film.

Firstly, the venue itself was uncomfortably warm. I know, I know, how ridiculous of me to moan about the heat in May/June but at times it was stifling. I had an immediate flashback to June last year when a group of us went to see the Comedy Store in the same venue and it was so uncomfortably hot that people actually left halfway through. Once the Pyramid staff opened the doors, a gust of fresh air blew in and it was wonderful but there was obviously an exercise class in the studio opposite and the music and shouting was a little off putting.

Secondly, during a huge scene between William and Mrs Beech, I should have been glued to the actors but I was so distracted by the pitter patter of Mrs Beech’s high heels on the stage floor. If I was to give any advice, it would be for Dawn Lloyd to wear flats for these scenes as if Jack Radcliffe didn’t have a microphone, we may have struggled to hear him – and I was on the second row.

Finally, there were only two toilets in the entire venue which meant that there were long, long queues during the interval and, as with any overused public toilet, they weren’t in the best of condition.

But all in all, I would say these three small points were overshadowed by the success of the play.

To all at Encore Productions – bravo. After the atrocities in Manchester last week, I think we all needed a bit of light entertainment which made us all realise that in times of darkness, pulling together is crucial. I thoroughly enjoyed myself last night, as did everyone else in the audience. Break a leg for your remaining two sell out performances.