WHEN Laura Marling last visited Nottingham, a little over three years ago, she was a shy 18-year-old playing to a packed Rescue Room. Since then, she’s grown her hair, her band and her music, taking on new influences  and widening her sound. Aided by a Brit award, she’s also grown her audience. The packed Concert Hall reminded Laura of her Quaker school assembly hall, and made her nervous. The lovely Don’t Ask Me Why merged into Salinas, at the end of which she broke a string. Marling abandoned the song, apologising for her lack of suave repartee while she changed guitars. She turned out to have some patter, though, telling us that she nicked the idea for the title track of her first album…

We arranged an overnight stay in Sheffield after a preview of the Crucible’s new production of ‘Democracy’ and booked to see a studio matinee of ‘Benefactors’ as an afterthought. ‘Democracy’ hasn’t opened yet, so I won’t go on about it much. Very good performances, good production and interesting subject matter, but not a great play. Too stodgy, too many people telling each other stuff that they already know. Too much politics to fit in. Still, I’d always rather see something that’s over ambitious and it gave us loads to talk about. I knew nothing about Benefactors before booking, other than – I suppose – that it was supposed to be a good play. And it’s sunny out, so I don’t have time to do it…

This is an extended version of the review that appeared in yesterday’s Nottingham Post, (the headline for the edited version wouldn’t have been my choice!) with added personal reflections. Over at the Playhouse, they’re reviving ‘Forever Young’, about a home for retired panto players. Each of tonight’s frontmen is in their early 80’s, yet none is ready to hang up his wind instrument yet. They can’t need the money, but is it love, or habit? A very full house came to find out. I’ve never reviewed a jazz show before, since I know my limitations and, while I go to several jazz gigs every year, I don’t have the breadth of musical knowledge to write well about them, so would rather fork out a few…

I don’t write many Amazon reviews, but this great novel by John Lucas needed reviewing and I may as well repeat what I had to say here. It’s currently out of stock on Amazon, but you can buy it online from the publishers or The Bookcase. This is a first novel by a well known academic, poet and memoirist, best known for the prize-winning 92 Acharnon Street and the fine 50’s memoir Next Year Will be Better: A Memoir of England in the 1950s. ‘Waterdrops’ moves adroitly between the Second World War and the mid-90’s, building a mystery about the fate of the central character’s father. At times, the reader worries that they are being cheated of some necessary, vital detail, only for the answer…

Only a week to go before the new Leonard Cohen album, ‘Old Ideas’, but in the meantime, here’s a track from an album that I didn’t hear last year (or it would have been high on my list below) but got for my birthday this week. I’ve been a fan of Meshell Ndegeocello since buying her classic break-up album Bitter in Portland, Maine on a road trip round the US in 1999. Her work moves between rock, jazz and soul and is consistently absorbing. She writes everything she performs, so I was surprised to find Leonard Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel on the new record. I’m not much of a fan of Cohen cover versions. A few are OK.  Jennifer Warnes Famous Blue Raincoat is pretty good.…