**** ONE DAY TO GO UNTIL THIS EVENT!! ****

There are still tickets available to see Damien perform 'Heartstrings:  Bittersweet Love Stories'

with WordTheatre at St James Theatre TOMORROW!

to book, click here

It's DamoDay!

Wishing all you lucky fans who are going to see Damien perform tonight an incredible time

Come and tell us all about it afterwards!

There is still time (and tickets) left to book for the event tonight,

click ---> here

This should be done by now.  Waiting patiently(!) to hear all about it... 

Damien's first reading with Gina Bellman 'The Woman At The Window' is from the short story collection 'It's Beginning to Hurt' by James Lasdun. 

His second reading, 'Angry' is from Joyce Carol Oates short stories 'Where is Here?' (thanks to WordTheatre for the info!)

Both books have been added to the 'short stories' section in the  Forum's UK and US Amazon store.

An excellent write-up of the evening su....I do love your blog posts!  It's taken me even longer to get round to this - sorry!

I must admit that I wouldn't really call myself a romantic - and, if I'm honest, I wouldn't have dreamed of going to this if it wasn't for the fact that Damien was performing...

The evening started with Rashan Stone (on piano - I did think of you domino!) and Lizzie Ball singing/playing 'nothing compares' - the Sinead O'Connor song - (which I love (despite not being a romantic!!))  I thought this would set the scene for the evening....so I was quite surprised at how much I laughed during the stories.

Both halves had two longer stories sandwiched between two shorter ones, interspersed or accompanied by music.  'The Woman at the Window' was told first by 'his' point of view, and then from 'her's.....and Damien was really funny as the awkward, slightly posh english gentleman who breaks into a New York womans's apartment, who has apparently locked herself in.  It's interesting that Su thought 'Angry' reminded her of Hal...because for me the character in this story was really Halish(?!) - an impression consolidated by the fact that 'the woman' said he was wearing a tweed jacket!!

I agree entirely with Su about the story 'Roy Spivey' - a brilliant, hilarious story...and Natascha McElhone totally nailed it! The short stories in the first half were also quite funny, but they all had a poingnancy about them too...

So the second half kicked off (...and I wasn't late back from the interval....not at all!  But thank goodness Cedering gave an introduction to the second half as well....)  'Angry' was definately a change in tone from the first half.  It was a story of love at first sight, leading to familiarity, anger and eventually violence - a short story but full of emotion, which Damien delivered with total conviction.  And so it followed that the second half was more serious (though it still had it's moments of humour) and more moving.  'And Here We Aren't, So Quickly',  was really touching and very cleverly written - it perfectly delivered by Ian Hart, despite the fact that it has no real narrative, but is a succession of statements.

It was a fantastic evening and definately the best WordTheatre event I've been to, and the combination of stories and music worked really well.

I can't add anything about what Damien had to say afterward, as I popped outside when we got back upstairs and after briefly chatting to the others he literally left just as I walked back inside!!