Review: Welcome to Night Vale - live at the Shepherd's Bush O2 Empire

Welcome to Night Vale had me at ‘hello.’

Well, it really had me at the introduction to its first episode:

‘A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale.’

Night Vale is a podcast, written and produced by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. It’s the fictional news show of a fictional town out in the vast American desert: a town where any conspiracy theory can be true. Black helicopters circle above, earthquakes seem to show up on instruments but can’t be felt by the inhabitants, and agents from a vague-yet-menacing government agency attend press conferences but never say a word.

It’s all narrated in the deep, warm, sonorous voice of Cecil, the radio host who manages to make everything seem perfectly normal. Sentient glow clouds, women giving birth to detached hands instead of babies, houses which don’t exist (‘It seems like it exists, like it’s right there when you look at it...’), all are discussed so calmly it almost tricks you into missing the aberrations.

I love it. The laid-back, understated humour, the surrealism, the gently meandering plot lines. I have been an addict for over a year now, and I actively look forward to the 1^st and 15^th of every month, when a new instalment will be posted online.

So when they announced that they were planning a European tour, I had to go.

The rather aptly blood-red theatre...

When I arrived at the Shepherd’s Bush O2 Empire an hour before the show was due to begin, the queue for the unreserved seating was already wrapped around the back of the theatre. It was a chilly night, with threatening rain, and you know what? It was the nicest queue I’ve ever stood in.

The only thing I can compare it to was the energy in the air when I went to see John Green the last time he came to the UK. There was a buzz of anticipation, and underneath that, there was camaraderie. We chatted and smiled, complimented those who had come in costume, and couldn’t wait for the show to begin.

Purple and black was the theme. Some people had come in Night Vale shirts or hoodies, some in lab coats – two ladies I sat next to were dressed as librarians, blood on their mouths and gore-stained copies of Helen Hunt’s biography (one of the few biographies stocked by the Night Vale Public Library) in their hands. Everywhere I looked, the show’s purple-eyed logo blinked out at me, printed on clothing or drawn on people’s foreheads. Most of the audience were in their 20s and 30s, but there were a few families and older groups as well. We’re a mixed bunch, us Night Vale fans.

The show was The Librarian, an episode written for live performance – it’ll be recorded and sold early next year. I hadn’t been entirely sure of what to expect: how could one person and a few guests standing on a stage talking be that interesting?

Cecil Baldwin. Photo: Liezl Espitona.

I had reckoned without the formidable skills of actor Cecil Baldwin, who plays the narrator of the same name. At first dwarfed by the big stage, he drew us in with the skill of a born storyteller, and kept us spellbound for an hour. There were a few visitors, including both writers making appearances as a ghostly presence and an intern, but mostly it was just Cecil – and it worked perfectly.

Often when comedies do live shows, the temptation is to wheel everything out at expense of coherency. Every character needs an appearance or a name-check, which is fun but exhausting. Here, the writers struck the perfect balance: The Librarian managed to get in a few in-jokes (horoscopes, the community calendar, a mention of Steve Carlsberg), but was admirably restrained, focussing on the main issue of an escaped librarian.

From the sarcastic and funny opening spiel from ‘proverb girl’ Meg Bashwiner (‘We all like to use our phones. I use mine to call my mom. Please don’t do that during the show – call my mom, I mean. She would be very confused.’) to the weather by musician Mary Epworth and the brief moments of audience participation, The Librarian was a brilliant experience.

If you get the chance to see these guys live, do it without hesitation. If you don’t…well, you can still listen to the show. Go on. Go and listen to it. Just the pilot. You can do it here.

Agree? Disagree? Want to gush at another Night Vale fan? Leave a comment!

Halloween for Grown-Ups

/http://rosebrettingham.blogspot.com/

Halloween can be sort of awkward for grown-ups, or at least for people who once loved Halloween as a child and slowly grew out of all the socially acceptable activities therein. I’m convinced that is the reason to have kids, so you can keep going trick-or-treating and have an excuse to dress up and have a whimsical night out and share your tooth decay with a tiny person who won’t judge how much you eat in one sitting. The costumes, the decorations, the constant fear of something or someone jumping out from a dark corner; these are the things that make life the wondrous and contradictory thing that we find ourselves caught up in, against our will, all our endings plagiarized. I love Halloween, ask anyone, they’ll tell you. It’s my one chance a year to be anyone I want to be, unhindered by skill or ability or money (if you’re a creative costume maker) or distance or any of the other infinite numbers of things that hold us back in this life. Halloween is, for me, pure magic. But even for me, Halloween as a grown up is sort of awkward. 

Why? Because I like the whimsical version, the candy coated, tacky plastic jewelry, glowing pumpkin version, and when you get older some of that is lost. If you love going out and getting drunk, then problem solved. And don’t get me wrong, I do love to do just that every now and then, but that’s not my priority on Halloween. This year one thing struck me much harder than ever before about Halloween as a grown-up, and this is where this blog post becomes relevant to the topic of this blog: I don’t watch enough TV to dress up for Halloween as an adult. 

I have never felt so out of touch than I did Friday night, out with some friends for a spooky good time on the streets of Charming Charm City, the part of town I assumed would be full of hipster versions of Disney characters and lots of bloody masks. And yes, these two categories were represented in abundance, however most of the costumes I saw were characters from TV shows that either happened in the prime of my generations’ TV watching years, or are still currently happening and watched by people my age. All I saw were girls wrapped in plastic bags and others carrying logs and lots dressed as cartoon characters I only have a vague awareness of. When did this happen? When did I get so out of touch that I don’t even recognize the most popular characters that TV has to offer? It's not like watching TV takes any effort, it's not something you have to try to do or make time for or practice to be good at. You just put it on, job's done. I’m not ashamed to be unaware of which Housewife of some county just passed me by at the bar, but when there was probably a character from Mad Men there as well that goes unnoticed, that’s when you know you have a problem (I have not watched a single episode of Mad Men). The only TV costumes I understood were Carmen Sandiego (there is always one, and I’m always jealous it’s not me), the Hound from Game of Thrones (which I’m still not even caught up on, but thanks to the internet, is completely spoiled for me regardless) and a gigantic and impressively constructed Cyberman from Doctor Who. Although I’ve only seen the Matt Smith Doctor Who episodes, so I don’t really know anything about Cybermen, not really, just what they look like. So that barely counts. Also in attendance however was Max from Where the Wild Things Are (classic) and Good Cop Bad Cop form the Lego movie, which just made me so happy that I momentarily forgot how I’m basically an old woman living under a rock. At least I saw the Lego movie. 

So what I’m really trying to make quite clear is how deeply unqualified I am to be writing on this blog, this great blog that none of us give enough attention. I either need to step it up, watch more TV, go to the movies more often, or read even more books than I already do to make up for it. Although at this point I don’t think that’s really humanly possible unless I quit my job, and that’s not happening. I really dig my job. 

Next year I need to do things differently. I need to team up with someone who lives in a neighborhood that gets trick-or-treaters so I can rain candy on all the tiny Darth Vaders and Supermen and Ladybugs, complimenting them on their fantastic costumes that don’t make me feel out of touch and out of my mind. 

Onward and Upward,

Maria