Lying hips, The Beatles and some comedy

This weekend my local theatre is having a small theatre festival to kick off the new theatre season 2006/2007. They have been doing this for years now and it hasn’t always been great. At times the weather was really horrible (okay not their fault), other times they did invite actors/bands/artists who weren’t known to most of the audience, so no one showed up.

This year they have changed some things. Instead of doing everything in the open air, they have tents now (quite handy, because it has been raining for weeks) and they have really improved on the acts too, they have a great line-up….hooray!

Yesterday was opening night. At first I didn’t want to go, because all my theatre going friends had engagements elsewhere this weekend, and some things are just not as much fun when you go on your own. But during the day I developed an itch, the kind of itch you cannot scratch, so by the end of the afternoon I decided to go after all.

First off, I went to see Dutch Stand-up comedy. Okay, I admit it, it’s not as cool as American or English Stand-up, but they have been improving a lot over the years. It was a bit disappointing to find out that the only English guy wasn’t there. I had been kind of looking forward to see Adam Fields (a Londoner living in Amsterdam) again, but like I said he wasn’t there. But hey, I still had a great night and I got to see Vincent Geers, Wilko Terwijn, Kristel Zweers and Jasper Valstar, so I am not complaining :)

After the comedy, I went to one of the other tents for something completely different…..The Beatles, or to be more precise The Beatles Revival. A group of Beatles look-a-likes from Prague. It’s kind of strange to watch them, because it’s almost as if you are transported through time or something. Very strange! Of course I have never seen The Beatles live, but I’ve seen all those old TV appearances and these guys from Prague really become The Beatles when they are on stage. They have everything down perfectly, the steps, the accent, the looks, the manners…..everything. The spectators loved it! Oh and I liked it too, even though I am not a Beatles fan.

After all this it was time for some here-and-now fun. There was an after party! A DJ mixed some music together, so the end result was a mixture of ‘80’s ‘90’s and new music! Great fun! There was one downside though. I have discovered that hips can lie, or at least tell a whole different story. A 40-something (no it wasn’t me, honest! ;) lady was trying to gyrate her hips like Shakira does in the video clip, but she wasn’t very successful. For some reason her efforts resembled a gyrating broomstick. But hey, who am I to complain she was having the time of her life.

Well tonight there is a revue, a big band and some musical stuff. Let’s see if it’s just as good as last night :)