No, I don't think so - the cast may even have changed since I saw it last year - but I'm sure they'll be great.

Next time you're in London, I'll happily take you to the West End version so you can compare and contrast :)

Wow. Current West End cast of Hadestown is really strong. Hades in particular (Shaun Dooley) is eye-opening - it's the first time I've considered Hades to be truly sadistic. Also very notable: Sebastian Lim-Seet as Orpheus. I've only seen him as a worker before; his voice is gorgeous.

Opening Google Sheets on my mobile while waiting for Hadestown to start, I accidentally opened my "DHCP allocation" spreadsheet instead of my "theatrical show attendance" spreadsheet. I wonder whether the existence of both in the "opened recently" screen would be enough to uniquely identify me.

Now that my commute includes the Elizabeth Line, the Bakerloo line feels hopelessly outdated. On the plus side, the reason for travelling on it is to see Hadestown again. (And maybe Beetlejuice tonight...)

2/10 - no sign of a baker, Little Red, a witch, a prince (is he charming? They say that he's charming) or a giant. Ripped trousers are just no substitute.

My spoiler-free complaint about UK Celebrity Traitors S2: whoever laid out the hoops for croquet had no idea what they were doing, unless the camera angle was really misleading.

(I acknowledge the "the internet has sort of broken this" part of the thread, but I think there are potentially ways to mitigate that - and arguably that was a pre-existing condition, merely exposed by this episode. I'm more interested in any changes caused *by* this episode.)

Is there any reasonable predictor of the impact of this episode on the future utility of the IHR? (My guess is that everyone else would just be guessing, but hey...)

Only just spotted that I misspelled Janney as Janey - due to autocorrect which just tried to do it to me again. Moral: always double check before posting...

Barry did that decades ago. No need for artificial or even significant human intelligence. Some things just come naturally.

Marketing said they wanted a promotional video showing the book "in the wild". I'm assuming the Puget Sound shellfish research laboratory's beach counts as "in the wild".

I don't think they want to associate those lines with Reform, but they probably want as many people as possible seeing/hearing them, so that some start repeating the lines themselves, and generally spreading the racism.

I doubt that they would adopt the lines *directly* (although Restore Britain might do so). I think it far more likely that they'll just allude to them, perhaps referencing indirectly and without explicit agreement.

Rewatching the last episode of The Diplomat S3 in preparation for S4. I'd forgotten how wonderful it is to see Allison Janey and Bradley Whitford together. (Whole cast is phenomenal of course, but only those two take me back 25+ years...)

That's an interesting expectation. Do you think Kemi Badenoch will still be leader at that point? Personally I think the Tories won't recover enough for that to happen unless Reform and Restore both implode pretty completely.

I assume that once the discussion gets going fully there will suddenly be a whole slew of armchair experts on different electoral systems. Some of us will no doubt do some research first, enough to be smug about actually knowing *something* - without really becoming experts in any meaningful sense.

But Burnham has quite a lot of pitch-rolling to do on big changes to go in the manifesto. And a big majority for this parliament, of course. I'm still hopeful the election won't be until 2029 - but I think it could then be a really big one (if you see what I mean).

Buy another pack, and maybe it'll be all right.