On the last evening of January, the intimate City Recital Hall at Angel Place was graced with AN EVENING WITH NEIL GAIMAN. The Hugo Award winning author put on a memorable show featuring story-telling, music and song.

The focus was on the beloved author reading stories and poems from his new anthology Trigger Warning, featuring tales as dark as they were humorous.

Neil spoke with a self-effacing charm and a confidence born of twenty five years of readings. In a very personable performance he had the crowd laughing over anecdotes of his travels and cheering about his condemnation of the portrayal of women in comic books.

Often praised for the broad scope of his writing, Neil’s pieces varied from whimsical fantasies of uninventors, to a moving tribute to Ray Bradbury and a powerful credo damning censorship. All the while the FourPlay string quartet was providing a haunting soundtrack to complement his words.

A diverse crowd of all ages was given a chance to pose Mr Gaiman questions, and he answered everything, from how he like his potatoes (“Orally”) to his writing methods, in good spirit. Of particular note was an answer about imagination, an aspect of Neil’s writing that is often extolled. He discussed how the source of his ideas is mostly boredom, how he lets himself follow strange chains of thought, what would happen if a werewolf bit a cat, or a chair, and then what the crime scene of a chair-wolf would look like.

In a surprising turn Neil also performed several songs, no doubt the influence of his singer songwriter wife Amanda Palmer. Despite explaining that he could not in fact sing, a deadpan rendition of Makin’ Whoopee amused the crowd, as did his own twitter sourced song The Problem with Saints.

A Top Shelf and Sydney Writer’s Festival production, AN EVENING WITH NEIL GAIMAN  was an evening  replete with wit and charm and just a touch of genius.