Dear Stratford East Picturehouse,

I’m writing to complain about Screen 1 of your fine establishment. I say “fine”, but on my recent visit to see Les Misérables I was shocked to find a problem with your roof: it kept leaking, causing water to run down my face several times during the film.

Upon leaving the screen after experiencing this most unfamiliar sensation – four times, no less – I was mocked by my friend for crying. I explained that I wasn’t crying, that it was just raining on my face, but they wouldn’t believe me. They insisted that it was the raw power of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s musical that, while not as good as Sweeney Todd, was given additional emotional heft by director Tom Hooper’s decision to use only live singing.

I refuted these allegations against my manliness, pointing again to the faulty roof in Screen 1. They repeated their argument, adding (in an attempt to save my face) that maybe I was crying with laughter at Russell Crowe’s singing as the lawman Javert. Or the consistently naff CGI Paris. This, of course, was nonsense: Russell Crowe was excellently cast in the ensemble of unpolished vocalists, a surprise only topped by the wonderful chin-wobbling skill of Eddie Redmayne and the mesmerising Samantha Barks. I’ve even listened to the soundtrack on repeat for the last five days.

I did, however, smirk at the naff CGI.

What about Anne Hathaway, my friend asked, doing I Dreamed A Dream? I confessed I might have shed a tear during that scene. But the rest of it I am sure was the ceiling. In fact, I’ve heard several reports of the same phenomenon happening to other men who have been to Stratford East Picturehouse to watch Les Misérables – and also, apparently, The Impossible.

This number of wet-faced men can’t be a coincidence.

I can therefore only conclude that your building is contravening multiple safety regulations, a hazard that I shall be reporting to the local authorities immediately, especially with the heavy snow currently sweeping across London.

So, if you want to see me at the Stratford East Picturehouse again, please fix the ceiling in Screen 1. Or I shall have no other option than to have it rain on my face all through Song for Marion next month. 

Yours angrily (but not upset),

Ivan Radford
A Male Man from Essex