Hampton Court Palace – Moat by N Chadwick cc 2.0 from Wikimedia Commons
A long but very enjoyable day.
I had been democratically pressganged into match managing the annual Hamsters v Dedanists real tennis match at Hampton Court Palace, about which I have Ogblogged plenty in the past, e.g. my first encounter with that court and fixture five years ago:
There will be a match report from the 2024 fixture in the fullness of time, which I shall be sure to link here once that epic has been written, approved by the libel lawyers and published…
…UPDATE – the lawyers have done their worst – here is a link to a scrape of that Dedanists’ page.
What better way would there be to round off a day of real tennis at a formerly moat-protected palace than a visit to The Network Theatre in Waterloo seeing one of my real tennis pals, Ian Falconer, perform in a play named The Moat.
If you need proof that Ian and I can form a formidable real tennis partnership, look no further than the following “lowlights” reel from the MCC tennis weekend earlier this year in which, as a strange reversal of the natural state of things, Ian played second fiddle to me in the absurd matter of leaving the ball to win points.
Absurdity being another helpful link between real tennis and the play, The Moat, which is grounded at an interesting junction between the Theatre of the Absurd and the Theatre of Cruelty.
The playwright, Mark A C Brown, describes the play thus on his website – click here for more on him and his work:
The Moat is an absurdist comedy set in the not too distant future in which the world is perpetually ablaze. Those who can afford it live amidst the inferno in moated communities. and one couple is trying to put on a dinner party. It would be going great if people would only stop dying and the fire would stop getting closer and closer.
To get the absurdity started before arrival, it is very clear on the Network Theatre website (and Ian Falconer’s entreaties to his cohort of ticket-holders) that the place is not exactly easy to find.
Network Theatre is rumoured to be difficult to find, so check out the map and directions below before your first visit.
We’re not on maps, but you can find Lower Road under Waterloo Station, leading off Waterloo Road, opposite Sainsbury’s.
Lower Road is a service road under Waterloo Station so you will need to ask for Network Theatre at the security gate (bring your e-ticket confirmation for access) and pass the loading bays before you find us on the left.
This video posted on YouTube shows you the way from Waterloo Station concourse.
If you have three minutes or so to watch the above-linked video, it is a masterpiece of suspenseful hand-held cinema, making The Blair Witch Project look like a Sunday afternoon picnic.
In Ian Falconer’s words:
…go down a long, murky tunnel… hopefully you make it and have time for a drink in the theatre bar beforehand…It’s a crumbling theatre space; don’t expect luxury – it’s very fringe!
Actually I got there in good time and my companion for the evening, Chris Swallow, a senior professional from the MCC real tennis court, had got there even earlier than me. It wasn’t quite as crumbly as Ian Falconer had led us to believe…
…let’s be frank, you can pay three figures for a West End show ticket and find yourself in a fairly crumbly place. And in that West End theatre you are unlikely to find such helpful and mostly friendly people as the volunteers who keep the Network Theatre going.
Returning to the play and production. The play is unsubtly allegorical, as indeed it is clearly intended to be. The party-throwing couple within the moat are supremely confident that their security systems and their moat can protect them from the incendiary dangers beyond, despite the clear and evident danger from the events we witness (or learn about) in their immediate vicinity. [Insert your own favourite social/political allegory here.]
Despite the characters being absurd caricatures of their types, the play works because it has an integral dramatic arc and a narrative line, with one or two sub-plots, that support that arc. After a while, I was able to “go with the flow” of the absurdity and enjoy the play. I only occasionally feel this way about absurdist pieces; on those occasions they tend to be written masterfully by playwrights such as Eugène Ionesco or Václav Havel.
I sense that director David Whitney has worked with writer Márk [sic] A C Brown before, which will surely have helped make the production flow, as this was not a simple piece to put on in a small fringe theatre. I thought the production values were very high given the constraints. I commend all of the crew as well as the cast – see this link for details; all shall have Ogblog tags.
Ian Falconer was excellent as the the lead character, Andre. I’m not just saying that because he is my friend. Of the supporting cast, I (and indeed Chris Swallow also) would single out Orietta Wanjiru Subrizi who played the part of delivery girl Eden with the right blend of contained gusto.
I do worry slightly about Ian becoming typecast in absurdist, allegorical plays about fire-engulfing situations. I note from his CV Fire in the Basement by Pavel Kohout and Huis Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre.
Parenthetically, my own trip to see Huis Clos, in 1989 (35 years ago…gulp), at the Lyric Studio, was in such a hot situation we the audience felt that we were experiencing the play in sense-around:
Mind you, as Ian Falconer’s nephew pointed out over drinks in the Network Theatre Bar afterwards, my regular choice of water bottle, for tennis and theatre alike, might have been designed for the play The Moat:
