Treading the Boards

So as sure as the sun will shine

I'm gonna get my share now of what's mine

And then the harder they come the harder they'll fall, one and all

Ooh the harder they come the harder they'll fall, one and all

-Jimmy Cliff-

I'm just back from the Theatre Royal in Stratford East. I went to see The Harder They Come with Howard.

And it was absolutely brilliant.

It was quite unlike any other performance I have ever seen. The cast ran riot in the audience at the beginning - my personal favourite being a lovely preacher man who gave some poor punter a lecture from the Bible and encouraged him to make a honest woman of his girlfriend!

The tunes were absolutely fantastic and translated beautifully by Jacqui Beckford.

The talented lead actor, Rolan Bell, who played Ivan was hotter than a jalapeno pepper with a side order of tabasco quite attractive (the boyfriend reads this blog) - something I didn't actually notice until after the interval as I was so distracted by Jacqui. What really shone through was the passion; the cast were really talented but it was obvious that they were tremendously enjoying themselves.

And you really can't go wrong with any play that has the Day O (Banana Boat) song in it.

This really should go to the West End. It was so much better than that Evita rubbish (the review for which is notably absent from this blog, not even worth writing about).

If you're London based, go and see this whilst you still can.

And whilst you're there - try the jerk chicken.