(Brighton) This is something of an indulgence.  Anyone who knows me knows that I have two very strong passions in my life (well I guess I have more but right now all I want to talk about is the two).  The good people at the Assembly Hall Theatre in Tunbridge Wells have one of the finest and most exciting plays coming there this month, Agatha Christie’s ‘Witness for the Prosecution’.

WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION
Mon 12-Sat 17 April
Tickets £27.50 – £17.50

Those passions I was talking about was for Sherlock Holmes and my other (pre Guy Richie), and my most favourite literary creation, Poirot.

The opportunity like this to see the work of one of the UK’s finest and most celebrated authors is a chance that you really can not miss and is certainly going to be something that will stay with you.  Seeing a live play, and one that is so well known and respected as this one, will only add to your a new love and appreciation, and to be in a theatre when they go through all this suspense is going to memorable.

Based on the calibre of the cast in this production you are going to be in for one of the most original, traditional, and splendid nights at the theatre, and I would implore you to come not simple because of the top rate cast but to also experience the work of one of the finest writers of the past 100 years.  This work has had something of a love affair with Hollywood since the 1950s when Billy Wilder directed Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton in one of the most celebrated film adaptation of the time.

About the Cast:

Leading this tour de force cast is Honeysuckle Weeks (from the BAFTA award-winning Foyle’s War), Denis Lill (star of the highly acclaimed series, The Royal), Ben Nealon (Soldier, Soldier) and Robert Duncan who played Gus Hedges in the multi-award-winning iconic comedy Drop The Dead Donkey.

Honeysuckle Weeks is best known for her starring role as Samantha Stewart in the British TV series Foyle’s War, since 2002. Her acting career started with the juvenile lead in a television series (an adaptation of Anne Fine’s Goggle Eyes, 1993, alongside Perdita); since then she has appeared in many programmes, including children’s series The Wild House, and the long-running series Midsomer Murders and Poirot.

In 1997 Honeysuckle and Perdita were both in Catherine Cookson’s The Rag Nymph, where Perdita played the younger version of her sister’s character. Her film roles include Anne Ridd in Lorna Doone (2000) and Sarah in My Brother Tom (2001). Weeks is currently best known, however, for her parts in three television series: Close Relations (1998), Ladies & Their Gentlemen (2002-2006) and Foyle’s War (2002-2008).

Denis Lill – apart from Survivors he is probably best known for his regular roles in Outside Edge, Mapp and Lucia, Only Fools and Horses, Rumpole of the Bailey and Sherlock Holmes, and for his memorable guest appearances in Doctor Who and Red Dwarf.

I’ve come across this story and think it’s worth putting it on TNC more because it has a sweetness and innocence that you don’t normally get in the world of Pop Music.

Bette Midler’s stage shows have become something of legend and she has constantly been selling out audiences in the US for years and he latest offering ‘The Showgirl Must Go On’ has been another great show for the diva and if those in the audience where anything to go by people need to see this before it was over.

On one of the last shows pop star PiNK came on stage, her husband in the audience along with former spice girl Mel B, and they duet of Midler’s classic The Rose.  At the moment there is no video of this, and from what we been told Midler was really taken aback by the polite stage run by PiNK – look forward to a possible release of this song in the near future!

US actress Brittany Murphy died of pneumonia, a Los Angeles coroner has ruled.  Coroner’s spokesman Craig Harvey added that iron-deficiency anaemia and “multiple drug intoxication” were secondary factors in her death.

The drugs were all prescription medicines. More details are due in two weeks when a complete report is ready.  Murphy collapsed at her Los Angeles home and was pronounced dead in hospital on 20 December, aged 32.  The coroner ruled the death was accidental.

The actress had been taken to hospital after the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to a call at her home.  Murphy’s husband, Simon Monjack and mother, Sharon Murphy, said the actress had been experiencing flu-like symptoms in the days before she died.

Monjack told The Associated Press last month that his wife had several prescriptions, including one for an anti-seizure drug, but did not abuse her medication.  He added she had also been taking over-the-counter remedies for her ailments.  Murphy was best known for her roles in Clueless, Sin City and 8 Mile and also provided the voice of Luanne Platter in more than 200 episodes of the animated US sitcom King Of The Hill.

This event is not not be missed and there is more to come from the guys behind it and we can not express enough that ALL funds raised will be going to the charities that are on the ground in Haiti right now, MSF HAITI, Action Aid HAITI.  The work that these organisations are doing is undeniably hard and fraught with a great deal of need and worry.  To get a real idea of the work that is at hand and the work that has already done we want to share with you this BBC News Story:

The BBC’s Creole-language programme in Haiti has helped reunite a Haitian-American mother with her son in the quake-devastated capital, Port-au-Prince.

Simone Macary, who lives in Boston, Massachusetts, had not heard from her 16-year-old son, Penaisse, since last month’s earthquake. He was in Haiti studying.

But when Penaisse texted his mother’s phone number to the Koneksyon Ayiti (Connexion Haiti) programme, the BBC was able to let her know he was alive.  The two later spoke on the phone for the first time since the 12 January earthquake, which killed at least 150,000 people.

Koneksyon Ayiti first heard from Penaisse on Sunday, when he sent a text message to the programme’s US phone number.
Penaisse’s text read: “I am homeless, the person responsible for me is dead, my mother is Simone Macary. She is American but cannot help me. The embassy is closed and I am on the street.”

Penaisse gave a number for his mother, but when the BBC called it, it turned out to be the wrong one.

BBC HAITIAN CREOLE SERVICE
Broadcasting on FM radio daily in Haitian Creole at 0910 local time (1410 GMT), for 20 minutes
Giving up-to-date information about where to get basic services and aid
Also available on satellite and online, and via social media

On Tuesday, Koneksyon Ayiti broadcast a message to Penaisse asking him to resend it. He was listening to the programme and immediately texted the correct number.  When the BBC phoned Simone to tell her Penaisse was alive, she sobbed: “I’ve been looking for you, my only son! I’ve have not been able to eat or sleep since the earthquake!”

She told the BBC she had been trying to fly to Haiti, but had not been able to find a flight, and asked the BBC to help find him.
The Koneksyon Ayiti team in Port-au-Prince managed to make contact with Penaisse and interviewed him.  When the programme called Simone and played the interview to her later on Tuesday, she reacted by singing How Great Thou Art while listening to the sound of her son’s voice.

On Wednesday, Simone told the BBC she had finally managed to make direct contact with him.  ”He’s still on the street, but at least he’s alive and I know he is going to be OK,” she said, adding that she would go to Port-au-Prince on the first available flight.
Penaisse and Simone are among the hundreds of thousands of Haitian family members separated by the earthquake.

The Red Cross has set up a family reunification programme for victims.

This is just one of the many millions of stories that are being experienced by the people of Haiti and they need your help.  An event like this needs no real plug or push because we all know and are aware that what is needed to people who have means and ability to reach deep and say ‘I care’.  What the BBC programme has shown is that there was a very important need for information and for people to be able to get help and through this they reunited a mother and son and this act has brought  a great deal of hope to the many other millions of displaced Haitians.

The Haiti Fundraiser at The Roundhouse is going to be OUR chance to say, to shout and to scream ‘WE CARE’!

There are few films this year that stand out as a true original, hard. and harsh piece of cinema than “Precious” based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.  What makes this even more of an event is the lead actress, Gabourey Sidibe has been nominated for every award this year as Best Actress, with the Oscar being one of the young actresses highlights.

What’s more shocking is though the other actesses in the Best Actress catagory are seasoned professionals, “Precious” is Ms Sidibe’s FIRST movie.  The movie has been helped by a sterling performance by Mo’nique who has won every Best Supporting Actress nod, even though she had refussed to do interviews.  And Oprah and Taylor Perry have lent their names to the film which has made sure it has gained a media following!

Precious is a simpler, tougher work than the two preceding films and altogether more effective. The setting is Harlem in 1987, the central character the obese 16-year-old black girl Claireece Jones, known as “Precious”, unforgettably played in her first professional role by the vast, imposing Gabourey Sidibe, daughter of a New York gospel singer and a Senegalese father. Precious is illiterate, aggressive, constantly tormented by fellow high-school pupils and abused, both physically and verbally by her alcoholic mother and father. She has a daughter with Down’s syndrome by her father, who constantly rapes her with the mother’s connivance and is pregnant again by him. Later, it’s revealed that the father has died of Aids.

You might well ask who is in the market for such a film and one thinks of Eliot’s smug statement: “Humankind cannot bear much reality” and those newsreaders who preface horrendous reports from Haiti with the warning: “There are scenes some viewers may find disturbing.” But over the years there have been a number of highly acclaimed pictures of this kind. Just after the Second World War, for instance, there was a widely shown Danish picture called Ditte, Child of Man, about the unremittingly miserable life of an illegitimate, working-class girl with a drunken mother, a brutal stepfather who was raised in poverty, seduced and abandoned.

Precious certainly is unflinching in the presentation of its heroine’s life and prospects. The brief impressionistic scenes in which she’s raped are horrendous and the confrontations with her mother Mary (a performance of extraordinary courage by the stand-up comedienne Mo’Nique) tear at one’s guts through their language and their violence.

But from very early on, Precious invites our sympathy, her first aggressive act being an attack on two boys who disrespect a white teacher she admires. She has an inner life in which she imagines herself a star. Worthy of a love she can’t find, she’s struggling to find meaning in her life.

An understanding principal arranges for her to go to a special school that offers remedial education through a programme called Each One/Teach One, where she encounters an sympathetic teacher and some fellow outsiders. The teacher, Ms Rain (Paula Patton), helps her come to terms with her life through writing about it and to learn she is capable of being loved. The girls in her new class are all bruised and scarred in different ways and involve her in volatile exchanges that are sometimes violent, but also roughly comic. A lot of the film is, indeed, edgily funny, as in a moment where the other girls laugh when Precious says “insect” instead of “incest” and she comes back: “Are you a scientist now?”

Another practitioner of tough love (or what we used to call being cruel only to be kind) is a perceptive social worker, Mrs Weiss (Mariah Carey), whose ethnic identity and social background intrigue Precious. Weiss presides over a final confrontation in her office between Precious and her mother. Earlier, we’ve seen Mary deceive an easily convinced welfare inspector into believing she’s a loving mother. Now, the mother is drawn into a confessional breakdown, explaining how she came to persecute her daughter; Mo’Nique’s handling of the moment is a tour de force.

There are other revealing and moving scenes. Precious, for instance, is introduced to the notion of organic food (though it doesn’t take) by a thoughtful male nurse. His job is as much a revelation to her as the discovery that Ms Rain is in a stable lesbian relationship. More than incidentally, there is on the wall of the gay couple’s apartment a poster for the surprise 1976 Broadway hit, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Ntozake Shange’s landmark “choreo poem” about the social and moral empowerment of African-American women. The show no doubt influenced Sapphire as a writer.

Precious ends on an affirmative note that is sufficiently hopeful to let the audience leave the cinema without rushing to find a strong drink or a lethal dose of arsenic, but is yet consistent with its heroine’s situation. The film does not, however, address itself to any larger social context. We have experienced a story, not read a case history.