I also thought to go by train to Kingston on this occasion, despite having had trouble with the trains the night before, with the platform indicator system being up the spout, telling all kinds of porkies, which caused the guard on the train we did catch some consternation. Was he to believe what he was reading on the boards or what he was being told by the driver? Who was in charge of the train? On this occasion the platform indicator system was spot on, but what it was telling us was that the connecting train to Kingston from Raynes Rark had been cancelled which meant that there was a 15 minute wait on the cold and windy platform. One does not always realise how cold it is until one has to stand in it.
There was some entertainment in that there were two young men smoking on the platform. Both young, one white and one black. Both well behaved, apart from one of them having a loud conversation on his mobile phone. No aggressive bravado about it, no furtive hiding at the far end of the platform either. Just more or less normal passengers. The station attendant paid no attention at all. No one saw fit to complain. So the world was having one of its sensible evenings, not making a fuss where none was needed.
The train eventually turned up, fortunately well heated, so what with that and a brisk walk through Kingston, I was back in normal condition by the time I reached the theatre, or at least the pub next to the theatre, that is to say the Ram, mostly full of bright young things, but they were also doing a very decent New Zealand white wine.
On to the show, which had indeed improved considerably since the first performance. All much slicker with no sag in the middle. The cast had, for example, learned to smoke their cigars with a little more conviction than they had displayed previously; not exactly seasoned puffers, but they were keeping the things on the move. Now, given that cigars taste pretty foul if you relight them, the stage manager must be providing half a dozen large size cigars for each performance. Given also that they are not allowed to advertise their provenance, they are going to have to pay the full whack, say £15 a go, which one might think was a reasonable drain on a modest, provincial stage management budget. Maybe they really are relighting, and the diffident puffing is down to said foul taste! For me, the remaining weak link was Simon Coates as Tate with all his antiquated prep school slang; maybe the director should have toned down his lines a bit.
But, in the round, a good show this second time around. And I would think that the farce is quite a fair take on Oxbridge life in Frayn's day. I wonder how fair it is now? Has that world moved on that much in the fifty years since he was there?
Very slow service at the interval, so back to the Ram for more of their New Zealand, where the obliging bar maid was happy to serve me, even transferring the wine to a small tumbler for ease and safety of carriage back to the auditorium - which was, strictly speaking, out of order as it was glass. But glass returned to the door man outside the pub in due course, on the way to the conveniently waiting taxi. Oddly, none of the other punters in the theatre seemed to want it.
And so back to another wait at Raynes Park, a little warmer this time, having taken on a little wine in the interval, a wait which gave me time to check out the green alkanet there, the subject of several posts back in 2011. See for example, 24th February 2001 in the other place (http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/). It was showing well in this mild if wet spring and, incidentally, provided further demonstration of the weak performance of the Lumia camera in weak light. You can just about see what is going on if you click to enlarge. How many weeks will it be before some bright spark finds it necessary to chop it all down, before it comes into flower? Pretty and blue, if rather small.
PS: I read this morning in Wikipedia that Frayn grew up in Ewell next to Epsom where we live and went to school at Kingston Grammar next to where the show was. Did he turn up at all for old times' sake?
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