Parked in sector 9 of the Rose Car Park, remembering to buy our evening long stay ticket on the way out. Of which more in due course.
Interested to find that the Swallow Bakery have taken over the bar, although we were not moved to try their cakes on this occasion. And not so impressed by one of their advertisements which suggested that there should be music in the bar, in the form of a piano and a saxophone, with speakers, which last addition one might have thought over the top with noisy instruments of this sort in a confined space. But then, we have had our fill of this sort of thing at the QEH.
Stalls more or less full, dress and upper circle more or less empty. Good mix of ages in the audience, including some young people to leaven the grey hairs (or lack of hairs) who dominate cultural events, at least the sort that we go to. Front of house volunteers nicely done up in academic gowns with a bright blue stripe signifying a Master's degree from nearby Kingston University. Perhaps I should tell them that the colours of our Epsom University of Creation might have been more appropriate (see http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/epsom).
Show good, but I thought it should have been done a little more briskly, perhaps getting it down from 120 minutes running time to a 90 minutes. Fine performance by Keith Barron of a middle aged person with a back problem trying to get his trousers on; a performance which touched many a chord in the audience, yours truly included.
For the second scene, the cast were provided with large cigars so that they could avail themselves of the quaint exemption in the smoking regulations which permits smoking on stage when the art requires it, similar to the exemption for otherwise obscene acts. But they were very half-hearted about, just taking the odd token puff. I don't think that they could have been real smokers at all, despite the warning notices about smoke posted at the entrance to the auditorium.
Jemma Redgrave, one of the fourth generation of luvvy Redgraves, was provided with a very heritage bicycle, rather like the one I was bought as a child to cycle to school on. Saddle with springs, fully enclosed chain, wicker basket, Sturmey Archer gears (http://www.sturmey-archer.com/), hub dynamo supported by batteries in a frame mounted tube, caliper brakes, green paint, the works. I can't remember whether the batteries were rechargeable, it seems a bit unlikely all those years ago.
Back to the car park in the rain to walk nonchalantly past the long queue of theatre goers who had not bothered to buy an advance ticket and so home to a spot of Jameson's twelve year old.
PS: I have just remembered about the oddness of being obscene on stage, given that obscene means, in the original Greek, off stage.
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