Once, Phoenix Theatre, London, Feb 15, 2014

Someone lent us the film, Once, last year: a Dublin-based story about a heart-broken musician earning a living doing vacuum cleaner repairs. He has a heap of songs about his anguish and lost love and, while busking, chances to meet a Czech woman who plays piano and who helps him put the songs together and get them recorded. (One song, Falling Slowly, byGlen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, is particularly evocative and, embarrassingly, seems to have found a direct autonomic pathway from my ear to brain to lachrymal gland.)

Over the course of the film we see a genuine (sex-free) love story develop, the songs playing a key role. But both parties have a history and prior commitments and we don't know until the end how things will play out. It's a truly soppy, beautiful film I have recommended to friends.

Last year the story was adapted for the stage and it was the Saturday matinee I took C to see as part of her birthday celebrations. We were not disappointed.

The stage setting at the Phoenix in London, is a Dublin pub. You can climb onto the stage and buy a drink (in souvenir beaker!) before the performance and in the interval. Behind the bar are multiple pub mirrors, which cleverly add both to the ambience and the audience experience. There are guitars, fiddles etc propped up around the sides of the stage.

The show starts with members of the cast wandering on and doing a few standard songs; the whole cast seem to be musicians and as the performance progresses they seamlessly transition into the musical sections..

The lead actors, Phoebe Fildes and David Hunter, were magnificent. I defy anyone not to fall in love with Phoebe's smile, of which we saw plenty. And they both did ample justice to the duets and the solo songs. The story follows the film plot pretty closely, with some neat use of subtitles where the Czech is important. Knowing what happens in advance in no way diminished the experience of the show; it was in turn funny, uplifting, moving.

A really good afternoon. And I don't even like musicals.