Just visiting Wilton’s Music Hall – the world’s oldest and last surviving music hall – in East London is a treat in itself.

At the same time experiencing the currently running song cycle Ten Plagues, which features Marc Almond, libretto by Mark Ravenhill and music by Conor Mitchell, is a double treat.

Ten Plagues is about one man’s survival through the London plague of 1655 that killed over 100,000 people. The song cycle consists of 17 separate pieces, all performed, wonderfully, by Almond.

A story of grief, isolation, and fear, Ten Plagues resonates far beyond 1655, through, for example, the AIDS ‘gay plague’, and to much that troubles our present time.

My experience of Ten Plagues at Wilton’s Music Hall is a very special, nay exquisite, memory.

CQ