An Evening With Marian Keyes, Nottingham & London
Her novels boast romantic plotlines, comic touches and whimsical cover art, and she’s a diehard fan of middle England TV staples including Strictly and Bake Off. Despite all that, Limerick-born, Dublin-based Marian Keyes is not your average chick-lit novelist: she has denounced the fluffy term so often ascribed to her bestsellers, and is as likely to engage her Twitter following in a conversation about mental health as she is a showstopping bake. Described by Zadie Smith as one of the more important modern literary feminists, Keyes has woven difficult themes including domestic abuse, addiction and bereavement into her 14 novels, and has been open about her own experiences of depression and alcoholism. Her fifth non-fiction work is Making It Up As I Go Along, a collection of essays on the challenges of being a modern woman, from growing older to breaking up with your hairdresser. Expect her trademark mix of sass and seriousness as she speaks about her new book.
Nottingham Playhouse, Mon; Waterstones Trafalgar Square, WC2, Wed
HD
Topsafe TV: Emerging London Film Directors Evening, London
Topsafe is a London-based online video platform set up, in its rather wordy phrasing, “to fill the void left by the exodus of terrestrial television’s late-night programming”. Whether or not a DIY site can fulfil such a massive task as re-imagining public service broadcasting’s arthouse commitment for the 21st century, it’s a laudable aim, and for this event it’s pulled together some of the most promising film-makers in London. The names showing and talking this evening range from relatively straight doc-makers to freeform impressionists. Rollo Jackson, whose acclaimed work has followed the city’s underground music obsessives, is joined by candid editorial photographer Bafic; Frank Lebon, who makes better-than-they-sound films about street markings and hi-vis jackets; and Raf Fellner & Tegen Williams, a duo who make black-and-white true-crime noir shorts. Essential for anyone curious about the future of moving image.
CJ
Anne Reid: I Love To Sing, Leicester
Being electrocuted by a faulty hairdryer in Corrie. Playing a grandmother who gets to knock boots with Daniel Craig in The Mother. Voicing Wendolene Ramsbottom in the Wallace And Gromit films. Spanning the comic generations of Tony Hancock and Ricky Gervais. Anne Reid has packed a lot of interesting and varied action into her career and, at the age of 80, she’s still going hard rather than going home – last year saw her return to West End musicals as she performed in A Little Night Music at the Palace Theatre. Reid may have enjoyed a widely praised late flowering of her career thanks to her part in Sally Wainwright’s beautifully drawn Last Tango In Halifax, but it’s song and dance that appears to have been her driving passion. This tour sees her join forces with her musical director Jason Carr to present an evening of wistful reminiscences, juicy showbiz anecdotes, and the odd judiciously chosen song.
Curve Theatre, Wed; touring to 13 Mar
PH
