12 October - Plays

Ivanov’ was good but Toph implored me to never get cheap tickets again. The ungrateful little sod. I dislike spending time with finger on the dial trying to book tickets for something within the first hour of them going on sale and frankly I have other things to do.

In this production I was limited to the Friday or Saturdays only due to his lordship’s absence in the belly of the beast in the provinces (where one’s hotel is the Jack Rabbit, I can only imagine) so yeah, the cheap balcony seats came up and I grabbed them. I have to agree that watching the top of actor’s heads is not that great but they do look up and frankly the difference between last row in balcony and front row in balcony is not significant. The voices carries fine, and ok you miss some facial expressions and nuances but these plays are sort of by numbers by now if you’re familiar with the canon: the bored farmers/bourgeoisie in the provinces, the impending bankruptcy of one or the other character, the old man in love with the young girl or vice versa and all generally moaning about their lot in life. I wonder always how much of it comes from Chekhov’s first hand experience with his patients…

We then went for a drink at the Groucho where we were very well behaved and left before witnessing anything of note. I’m always reminded of the story about this woman who worked with a friend in TV (god it’s always TV that features the biggest drunks) who gave up drinking after one of her very regular sozzled evenings ended here – as was her usual - and she found herself snogging Johnny Vegas. Which, you know, she’s a good looking woman of 40 something I’m told, no need to go there.