Cabaret

I have had a perfect evening.

More or less.

Actually more.

I got my hair cut this afternoon. Which is an understatement, really; generally I get it cut, it resembles a pair of curtains, grows longer and then I get it cut again. This was much better. It's been cut, and it's layered and it's got choppy bits and faintly resembles a mushroom cloud and I love it. I really do. And I never love my hair. So there's something new.

So... I liked my hair. I had something to wear, for once - black trousers and red top and that big, heavy black woollen thing - and I think there really is something in feeling better about life in general when you feel better about how you look.

Pedar dropped me off at Becca's at seven. I was only there for about two minutes - long enough for Becca to say, "Your hair!" - when Nicola and her dad turned up. Off we went down to school, and we were actually on time. Bev didn't come (she was supposed to, and we bought a ticket for her yesterday) because she was in bed with a migraine, so it was just the three of us. Becca had all the tickets, so she handed them in and in we went. On our way in, I saw Mrs Barry, who waved at me and mouthed, "Your hair!" I went across and met Patrick. He's her son, is in my year, and I've heard a lot about him. Apparently vice versa, too, because upon seeing me, the first thing he said was, "So you're Iona."

"Yes," I said, and would have said more but Becca and Nicola were watching with pleasant hurry-the-fuck-up expressions on their faces, so we went and sat down. Beck O promptly sat down next to Becca, much to her endless delight. She kept on nudging her and delivering a seemingly endless commentary. It was all very annoying.

The play - well, musical - started on time for once, probably because tonight was the last night. It was Cabaret - and it was good. The opening theme - "Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome..." is still in my head now; it was wonderful. They had good scenery too, proper neon lights and everything, and a very good compere. I say compere when it is actually a part in the musical, and Rob Feltrup played him to perfection. He was campy, he was feminine, he pulled off wearing gorgeous glittery make-up, he was perfect. And he had such perfect dialogue too, delivered in a campy-yet-German accent. "This is the Kit Kat Klub! Life is beautiful! The girls are beautiful! Even the orchestra is beautiful!"

[At that point, the orchestra stood up, bowed, and turned around to reveal t-shirts with "The Beautiful Orchestra" in pink writing]

Helena was good, too. Oh, she was sublime. Her part was of an old German woman, Fraulein Schneider, with a heavy German accent, and while it was mainly a comic role, it ended up really rather sad and poignant, and she did it very well indeed. She sang well, too; but then, she's always been a very good singer. Becca kept wanting to shout "Pineapple!" at her. Becca and Nicola were seeing Cabaret for the second time - they went on Wednesday and liked it enough to see it again. This provided the perfect opportunity for me to go, so I did. We got the tickets yesterday at Pritchard's.

In the interval, I wanted to go across to speak to Patrick. However, this proved difficult when I'd only said one word to him so far. We were up in the boys' school canteen, and I was holding a lukewarm cup of coffee and a piece of shortbread. Becca and Nicola went off to eat theirs, but Becky O wanted to go and find whatsisname, Jonny Stone, so she kept going back and forth through this tiny corridor and pushing past Patrick. About the fourth time this happened, he looked up at me and said, "Haven't I seen you before?"

And it really was as simple as that. I stood there, leaning against the wall, having lost my coffee and shortbread long ago, and talked to him about God-knows-what. Books, to start with; then exploding microwaves, people getting lost, the difficulty in buying jeans when you're above average height (he really is - he had to bend his knees to talk to me at eye-level) and why he goes to boarding-school rather than Merchants' (he said, "You've met my parents, right? Wouldn't you like to be as far away as possible?") and in the end, Mrs Barry came across and told us the second half was starting and we'd missed the entire interval.

I ran down, met Becca and Nicola, and had barely sat down when the second half began. Rob Feltrup. In drag. A green satin dress. Doing the can-can. Oh, my. And for no immediately apparent reason (just like in the first half, he had a menage-á-trois behind a blanket for no apparent reason). He just came on, did the dance, stopped for the cheers and then went off again.

But despite that beginning, the second half was profoundly depressing. By this time, I was getting tired of Jayne Earl. She was playing the female lead, and even though she's always in these productions and everyone always talks about how good she is, I really didn't agree. She sounded like she was reading lines rather than acting, and she couldn't sing well either. Because of her, I rather lost interest in the main love-story-arc, although I was surprised at how it ended. You would expect them to go off to America and start a family - but no, she has an abortion and refuses to go with him. She thinks it's politics and it will all blow over, but of course it doesn't. I kept on thinking about my GCSE History - I mean, it's set in Berlin in 1931, so how could I not? They mentioned everything we learnt about, including hyper-inflation and the rise of the Nazis. The boys who were playing them made very good Nazis, incidentally. They delivered perfect "Heil Hitler!" salutes while standing on chairs.

The other half of the story, the one Helena was in, was much better. It was terribly sad again - she refuses to marry a Jew, not because she doesn't love him, but for purely practical reasons - what if the Nazis get into power? And when the show ended, with the Klub in disarray, the Nazis gaining power, the lovers all separated and the catchy theme music suddenly being played in a minor key, I couldn't believe a musical could end on such a depressing note.

But it was good. It was very good. There were thanks all round, especially from Dr. Gil, who annoys me, but we sat through it all and laughed at the entire cast trying to do the can-can. Afterwards, I looked for Helena, but couldn't find her (she promised me I could take a picture of her in costume, so meh). And after that, I could only go out and follow Becca and Nicola. They went home, but I rang my parents and they said they'd be there in ten minutes.

So, I had ten minutes to kill. What would you have done? I went back inside, and without even trying, walked straight into Mrs Barry bewailing the fact that Charlotte had gone to the aftershow party and wasn't expected home until "four o'clock tomorrow afternoon", to quote Patrick. Talking of Patrick, I asked him for his mobile number. He said he didn't have one. I asked him for his email address, he said he did have one, but "my pervy IT teacher reads all our emails."

"You're hopeless," I told him. He laughed. Mrs Barry yelled, "Hurry up!" from the background.

So he went off. But he'll be back at Christmas, so yay.

When I went outside, my parents were there, right on cue. So, it has been an absolutely perfect evening, and I am now going to bed.

Good night.