Arts Ahead 14 to 20 September on londonist

Great picture, right?

I'm still desperate to see another Matthew Bourne ballet after completely loving his Nutcracker! at the New Wimbledon Theatre a couple of Christmasses ago. That time, we were lucky enough to hear a Q&A with the man himself. Despite a few years of chasing, I've never been able to secure an interview with him for Visit London... Maybe one day...

Anyway, that's only the tutu on the top of what's happening in London this week. It's a packed one, and I've got two shows to look forward to.

• Complicite's A Disappearing Number with the in-laws-to-be (heh!)
• AND Design for Living with Moriarty at the Old Vic

On top of that, this week's Arts Ahead gave me the chance to link to one of my fave reviews from last year: Morecambe. Sometimes these things just write themselves. This is an example of one that did. I'm still proud of it a year later. (Ah, the small pleasures of your author.)

Maaan, I hope A Disappearing Number is good. There's so much hype about this show. And you know how I can sometimes react to hype. Fingers crossed for me, everyone.

Read the rest of this week's Arts Ahead on londonist

Sherlock Update: What Moriarty Did Next

It probably won't come as a surprise that I loved the BBC's new Sherlock mini-series.

To my mind, Sherlock had everything a good TV show should have. Fab scripts, nice twists, beautifully shot, wonderfully acted.

And, as m@ londonist has pointed out, it was saturated with shots of sexy London. OK, so the second episode of the trio was significantly weaker in my opinion, but I'm willing to overlook that for the classy quality of the rest. The third episode fight scene alone was a terrific piece of TV: it had me holding my breath in wonder...

So, too, did the the arrival of Moriarty. I was paused, waiting for a quiet moment to start breathing again. Here, to my mind, was an unknown, although clearly terrifically talented, actor chewing up the scenery like he'd been born to do it. (His performance soon disipated my all my initial disappointment that Moriarty wasn't a woman.) It was quite a surprise. I suppose I was expecting Moriarty to be played by someone as familiar to me as Sherlock, Watson, Mrs Hudson and Lestrade are.

Turns out, of course, that he's been around for a while. Of course. Andrew Scott was even credited in Saving Private Ryan. And he's been winning awards left, right and centre in London's theatres for a while now.

Researching the upcoming Design For Living at the Old Vic, I came upon this:



Rather pleasing, don't you think?