My recollection of this evening is thin to say the least. My guess is that it was an impromptu works outing, the diary simply reading:
Work busy – went to NT in evening with party
I am pretty sure we didn’t see a show. Danton’s Death was showing at the Olivier at that time but I’m pretty sure I didn’t see that and in any case I don’t think they even put the show on that Wednesday evening.
I am similarly sure that I didn’t see the production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Cottesloe back then. My Cottesloe days were still way ahead of me.
In any case, had I seen a play I am sure I’d have at least noted what we saw – I was already enough of a theatre freak for that. So we didn’t see a play.
No.
I think we must have gone to the NT as scavengers that night. The press night for the Lyttelton production of Way Upstream, scheduled for that night, infamously had to be postponed because a water tank flooded.
Newman Harris had a fair smattering of luvvie clients so I suspect that we were invited along to help mop up, hospitality-wise…certainly not to help mop up the Lyttelton Theatre itself, I’d have remembered that better.
I wonder who was in that “party”? Probably a similar bunch to those I nailed in a short piece about the Phoenix & football from 10 days earlier…
…except some of the more senior folk might well have joined us midweek – Stanley Bloom even, possibly, as he had taken over a chunk of Harry Newman’s luvvie portfolio.