Naughty but nice

I love the Old Joint Stock theatre. I love the fact that it's slap-bang in the middle of corporate Birmingham. I love the fact that it's a tiny little theatre above a massive old pub. I love the fact that in that massive old pub there are lots of legal/financial/business types muttering about the credit crunch with no idea that above there heads there's a whole song-and-dance going on. And I love the fact that they put on plays at 2 o'clock in the blinking afternoon on a weekday - and the place is full.

So, leaving the suits downstairs to swill their over-priced beer grumble about the FTSE 100, I scuttled upstairs into a darkened den to hear a troubled jazz singer bare her soul to the audience and sing some old classics in Playing Life ; the newest show on the block from Birmingham-based Sudden Productions. Really, it's just an excuse to string a load of classic jazz songs together; but it's a clever idea: a troubled singer who uses the songs as a kind of confessional; the soundtrack to the story of her not-too-pretty life. Truth be told, there's only so much 'troubled soul' that I can take, but I enjoyed the blurring of the boundaries between her life and her music; the sentiment of her songs and the reality of her difficult existence.

Playing Life is a great title, and there's something at times uncomfortably intimate about this production; as Louise (the protagonist) confronts the real ins and outs and nitty-gritty of life: relationships, identity, significance. It's these kind of things that we actually live for, rather than just the stuff we do. My guilt at my escapist theatrical jaunt dissipated as I started to realise that I'd not shirked 'real life' by running off to the theatre at 2 pm on a Friday afternoon, but had found myself in a space that had been set up to engage with it, on an intimate level.

I guess the point is that we're all 'playing life' to some degree. I'm sure the suits downstairs would agree, as they kicked around their profit and loss, inflation and litigation over one last hard-earned pint.