Barbican, week one

First Friday of March (this has been a month accentuated by travels and health problems - but I'm determined not to let either get in the way of catching up with these notes), 7pm. After two bed-ridden days, I was ever so relieved to be interacting with the world again, in the way of hearing a crowd-alluring programme (Rachmaninoff second piano concerto, Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony) with the LSO. But right now, the impossibility to relief myself was the pressing problem - I expected it to be a popular concert but I had never seen the queues for the ladys' loos at the Barbican so long. I ran upstairs to the balcony level. The size of the waiting crowd there was even more daunting. It suddenly occured to me that the ones located in the Riverside cafe would probably be a safer bet now that the concert was almost about to start. I was right, but as I ran across the foyer to reach them I also realised that the queues had bot looked like a typical LSO audience. Now I know they've got a wonderful marketing department working very hard to reach out to new audiences, but surely all the hoodie-donning, bright-haired youngsters with their smooth, rhythmic moves in every step were not here to hear Rachmaninoff?

Then it dawned on me: Pied Piper had arrived in EC1. This was the hip hop dance show that took Theatre Royal Stratford East (if ever you want to visit a venue where watching the audience themselves can be just as fascinating as whatever's on stage, this is it) by storm last year and went on to win an Olivier. The savvy theatre team at Barbican obviously spotted its potential immediately and pocketed the transfer that were now drawing full-house crowds that were demographically as different from the loyal LSO audiences as possible. And as a result, I only narrowly avoided floor-wetting public embarrassment. This is how every major multi-disciplinary arts venue in the world should be run, I said to myself, except the fact that they'd do even better to upgrade the lavatories (I don't want to seem to have a morbid obsession about this, but the typically awful national standard of British plumbing is always epitomised at busy arts centres and West End theatres). I made a mental note to book ourselves for Pied Piper as soon as we got home.