Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People 2019 Wrap Up

In 2019 we took Nine Lessons to the north, staged a family matinee edition and had our usual four sold out nights in London.

This year was the tenth anniversary of Nine Lessons, despite it starting about twelve years ago. We had a few years off in the middle. It’s a lot of work. So we knew this year we had to do something special and so, for the first time ever we took the show out of London, hosting two nights of our mayhem at The Lowry in Salford. With nary a seat left from either show, we were delighted to welcomed with open arms up north!

Then, back in London at our new home of Kings Place, we staged the first ever family matinee edition of Nine Lessons! With that show, and the other four evening shows, being sold out it should be no surprise that we’ll be back again next year with five London shows, ON SALE NOW, another up north, and maybe even another a little further north…

All profits from this year’s run of shows, totalling tens of thousands of pounds, went towards our chosen charities including Clic Sargent and Two Wheels for Life.

We also collected for the Euston Food Bank over the course of the shows where our phenomenal cast, crew and audience brought in over 700kg of food, toiletries and more that ended up with those that needed it most in time for Christmas.

What happened this year?

A whole lot. Across the seven shows we, as always, had a little bit of everything. Science, music, comedy, poetry, spoken word, experiments, cooking and on and on and on. Each show was, of course, MC’d by the mercurial and cardiganed Robin Ince and we had over 100 different people on stage throughout the run. Helen Czerski talked about whale poo and then got a loud, solitary round of applause from one person for the mere image of a Victorian sewage plant. Jim Al-Khalili told us because of quantum physics a kilogram might not be a kilogram anymore. Matt Parker brought along a bit of a plane. Foxdog Studios shot sausages at each other whilst dressed as pudding. We had a double dose of blues from Smitten and Femi & Marco. Reece Shearsmith was our surprise Friday 13th guest for a special Christmas Ghost Story. Andrea Sella spilt some acid and then blew some shit up, some of it on purpose. Liz Bonnin talked about plastic, Chris Jackson volcanoes, Katie Steckles mathematical beer, Konnie Huq ‘cookies’, Michelle Dickinson made some unicorn noodles, Grace Petrie sung about Frozen and we even had a special visit from Santa Claus himself who looked remarkably like Stewart Lee. And a whole lot, lot, lot more.

And Robin Ince brought 400 odd people to a hushed, somewhat teary silence to open the show the day after the election with a poem he wrote on the way to the theatre which you can view here.

Please enjoy the gallery below of just some of the fun.

GALLERY

A selection of photos from the shows taken by Natalie Shaw with a few from Steve Best
(Please note that due to illness we didn’t have our photographer with us in Salford so most of these great pics are from London with a few dodgy phone ones from up north).