Laura Mvula was captivating, and I cried when opera star Jamie Barton took to the stage with a rainbow flag. Shame the conductor spent the entire night with his back to us
‘That old lady with the white hair just said ‘Oh fuck off’ to that man playing the guitar” my seven-year-old whispered to me as we arrived at the Royal Albert Hall for the Last Night of the Proms. “Optimism isn’t enough to get us a deal” he sang. “Yes it is,” a union jack-waving man replied. At first, I thought it was all part of the show. A neat conceit I’d often seen used by devised theatre groups at the Edinburgh festival, where they’d start the show outside, interacting with the audience, planting ideas, making us think.
“How clever of the Proms director to think of doing this,” I said to my son. “In a time of such political uncertainty, and social division, they’ve really thought outside the box this year. This is about leaving our disagreements outside, I think, and coming together through a shared love of music. It’s about celebrating Britishness, and
British music, and what it means to be British, and leaving politics out of it.”