Once bitten but seemingly not twice shy, here was another evening at the Questors with Pauline, Janie’s mum. Quite soon after the previous visit to see The Real Thing:
On this occasion, I had been at a BDO Awayday on the Friday and overnight into the Saturday. This might have been the one after which Steve Taylor nearly lost his life in a car accident driving off to play cricket on the Saturday, but perhaps that was an earlier one.
I too was taking risks with my next day activities, but a different family of risks.
Anyway, according to Janie’s diary, she took work on the Saturday morning and gave blood that afternoon, before our evening engagement with her mum…
…that really is like giving blood twice in one day – not recommended.
Much like with The Real Thing, Janie and I got the opportunity, about seven years later, to see a tippy-top professional production of this fine play – in the case of All My Sons, one of Arthur Miller’s finest.
The Questors production was not at all bad, though.
No drinks at Pauline’s before this one – I think Pauline set into what became the regular pattern of “fairness”, which was:
Pauline did The Questors tickets
Janie paid for the drinks at The Questors
I paid for the restaurant meal afterwards.
I learnt some years later that, as a member of The Questors, Pauline got a certain number of free tickets for shows and I am pretty sure she calibrated her membership/invitations to ensure that she wasn’t actually paying for our tickets…ever.
Fair enough.
Janie’s diary reveals that we ate at Lisa’s after that particular show. Lisa served pretty good food on Pitshanger Lane, but my goodness did you get Lisa’s life story thrown in free of charge along with the food, especially if you were one of only a handful of late/after theatre tables.
Interesting stuff. It’s one of those nights at the theatre about which I remember little detail but it left a lingering impression on me nonetheless. I can still sort-of remember the sights, sounds and even smells of it.
Janie and I went threee times in a fortnight to see RNT Studio plays at the Cottesloe. This was the first of those three visits. It was a modern Liverpudlian play of the post-Thatcherism variety. We thought it was a very good play and really enjoyed (if that is the right word) this production.
Michael Church gave it a very good review in the Observer:
I liked this play and production far more than Janie did. Where I liked the intellectual aspects of the content, Janie found them pretentious and at times confusing.
Janie and I felt motivated to see a professional production of The Real Thing a few years later at the Donmar Warehouse.I recall the play working much better, especially for Janie, second time around.
Still, I don’t think the evening went too badly. I’m pretty sure I treated the pair of them to dinner after show, but I do not recall where and both our diaries are silent on the matter.
It almost certainly would have been either Wine & Mousaka, Lisa’s or Noughts & Crosses in those days. I don’t know why, but I think it was Wine & Mousaka that first time.
The “programme” – or rather the single sheet of printed A4 you tended to get at the Orange Tree Room – went missing for this show, which is a shame.
It was one of three plays we went to see in that room above the Orange Tree Pub, which they kept going as a second venue for a while but stopped using I think later that year.
This was Janie’s and my first visit to The Orange Tree together…my first visit there full stop.
I cannot reconstruct the whole cast and creatives list, but we can ascertain that the cast included:
Michael Higgs;
Henrietta Garden;
Mairéad Carty;
Ian Angus Wilkie.
Rachel Kavanaugh directed.
I remember really liking this play and the production and really liking The Orange Tree Room. It reminded me a bit of The Gate, a small fringe venue of which I was already fond.
Did they really make more money turning that prime space into hotel rooms?…
What a cast: Maggie Steed, Trevor Baxter, Caroline Quentin, Peter Wingfield, Stefan Bednarczyk, Marcello Magni. Joint directors Mike Alfreds and Neil Bartlett.
No wonder I was keen to see it.
Still, I don’t think Janie and I were wild about this one. I was fast learning that Janie doesn’t like classics as much as she likes modern pieces, nor does she like farce. Marivaux was never likely to float Janie’s boat.
Yet worse, from a “what Janie does and doesn’t like” point of view, this production had re-located the piece in the 1930’s, adding a Cowardesque flavour to it that didn’t go down well with the reviews that are currently ( as I write in 2019) on-line/clippable.
Despite that, the sheer weight of talent on show carried the day for us, as we both found the production entertaining and could not question its quality of production.
Below is Michael Billington’s review from the Guardian:
I was reminded of this day in conversation with John Random in February 2021. I have just received a bundle of scripts and ephemera from Erica Stanton, Chris Stanton’s widow, including materials pertaining to the show, Swing Low Sweet Testicles.
John reflected on the show and mentioned a diary note about promoting the show on 15 December. I remembered seeing the show at that time, checked my diary and discovered that I saw the show on 17 December.
Below is the B-Side of the flyer for that show. The reviews must relate to an earlier Noel Christopher extravaganza, known simply as The Show, scripts for which also arrived in Erica’s bundle.
Swing Low Sweet Testicles itself mustered at least one decent review:
Can’t imagine where City Limits got that date range from – it ran from December 9th 1992 to January 17th 1993.
The cast and crew were NewsRevue stalwarts and most had been somewhat involved in my early successes with that mob.
I don’t think that Cliff Kelly had yet overlapped with my material in NewsRevue, but I might be mistaken.
Chloe Lucas had done a magnificent job of belting my Coal Digger song in the Autumn NewsRevue run preceding Swing Low Sweet Testicles. I’m pretty sure that the Coal Digger song, along with a couple of my others, was in the Christmas run of NewsRevue which I saw (for a second time) after Testicles.
Anyway, I rather enjoyed Swing Low Sweet Testicles. I was partial to Noel’s writing and was glad of the opportunity to see some of his less-topical, more-enduring material.
Below is the programme for the NewsRevue show that night, which I stayed on to see for a second time, having seen the opening night on 26 November.
Earlier That Day…Getting Into The Zone
My diary also records a memorable working day. Memorable for inadvertent, comedic reasons.
I was working as a management consultant for Binder Hamlyn at that time. On that day, I accompanied the National VAT Partner, Alan Buckett, to visit a large European Manufacturing Group, whose UK headquarters were out on the M4 corridor, to help them get their heads around something or other.
We were done with that by lunchtime and Alan suggested stopping for a bite to eat in Earls Court – a convenient stop on the way back to the City for him and a short hop to home for me, as I had an early-evening engagement with Testicles and didn’t want to go back to the City.
Alan parked his car and we walked down the Earls Court Road, in search of a wine bar/restaurant someone had recommended to him.
Ah, there it is…
…said Alan, striding towards the place he had been aiming towards.
But instead of walking down the stairs to, as I could see it, the entrance to the wine bar in question, Alan marched up the stairs and into…
Clonezone. I believe it is accurate to describe that particular store as a Gay fetishist fashion emporium.
I tried to stop him, but Alan had his stomp on and disappeared into the shop.
I waited outside for what seemed ages but was probably only a few seconds.
The tall, besuited Alan, who normally looked every inch a City gent, retreated from Clonezone rather sheepishly.
I smiled.
Alan and I went into the wine bar restaurant for a light lunch and a debrief.
Towards the end of the lunch, Alan said,
When you get back to the office, I’d just prefer it if you didn’t mention…
…I said that his Clonezone secret was safe with me. Alan is long-since retired now and I’m pretty sure, if he remembers the story at all, it’d be the funny side of it that has stuck in his mind.
Alan might well have shocked the clones within as much as they (and the place) shocked him.
Janie and I saw a preview of this one and thought it was absoutely great. Janie has since formed an aversion to Dame Judy Dench…or perhaps Janie liked this one despite Judy.
