Diary says that we went out quite a bit midweek that week.
Tuesday 29 May – dinner at Jim Thompson’s at 617 King’s Road. A Thai brasserie type place. With Kim, Micky, Anthea and Mitchell. I think we were far more impressed with our company than we were with the place, which was crowded and noisy.
Thursday 31 May – Marie Logan’s leaving do (from Z/Yen) at The Dive in James Street. Another crowded place, if I remember correctly.
Yogi Berra famously said (although almost certainly did not originate the quip):
“Nobody ever goes there anymore — it’s too crowded.”
That quip certainly seems to have applied to both of these venues, which both closed down not long after our May 2001 visits.
That was my one word log entry for this one, which both of us o indeed remember as superb. We were deep into Neil LaBute back then and might still be if he was still writing plays like this one.
Add to that Almeida quality of production and four fine actors: Rachel Weisz, Paul Rudd, Gretchen Mol and Frederick Weller – it wasn’t going to go wrong. I don’t normally approve of playwrights directing their own work, but Neil LaBute was actually very good at doing the director’s job with his own material.
A rare visit to the Almeida on a Friday for us – it was a bank holiday weekend and we had little else on, so I think this will only have come down to getting good seats for a preview.
Here’s what the critics had to say best part of a week after we had seen it. Charles Spencer was very impressed in The Telegraph:
This was the first of several occasions I treated The Duchess, Daisy’s (Janie’s) mum, as well as Janie, to a day at the Lord’s test match.
My diary tells me that I booked The Tavern Concourse for this day, which suggests to me that this match – basically part of a warm up mini series ahead of that summer’s Ashes – had not sold well to the members, so an opportunity arose for the hoi polloi (as I then was – not even a member of Middlesex yet) to snap up some decent seats. Ironically, these days, as a member, I tend to choose to sit in that “despised” members area precisely because it tends populated by cricket loving members & friends, many of whom are also my tennis pals.
Returning to May 2001, I no doubt had made The Duchess envious with talk of my new-found test cricket pals and exploits the previous season…
Anyway, I scored three tickets for the Friday of the England v Pakistan test of 2001, little knowing that Day Two would in effect become Day One, as the first day was a washout.
In 2001, washouts at Lord’s could still easily spill into the second day, as this was before the laying of the wonderful modern drainage system, which I think was done some 18 months later.
But we were in luck. The weather improved, Lord’s properly dried out, and we got a full day of cricket.
Phew.
Because it would have been my fault had we not got much or any cricket.
Not only that, but we saw England do rather well, albeit going slowly, losing only four wickets in the day. We saw Michael Atherton, Marcus Trescothick, Nasser Hussein, Michael Vaughan and Graham Thorpe all score runs. Thorpe’s innings was the highlight. We even saw Ryan Sidebottom score four as nightwatchman.
The Duchess no doubt told us many times over that Howard had been a MEMBER of the MCC at Lord’s and that she would have hung out with him the pavilion if only they had allowed in women. Instead, she hung out with him in the Tavern at Lord’s – this stand where we are sitting used to be the actual front of The Tavern you know…and of course she would always be with Howard in the pavilion at the Oval, where they would frequently have a drink with people like Dennis [Compton], Ted [Dexter], Peter [May], Ken [Barrington], Tony [Locke], Jim [Laker], The Bedser Twins, Keith [Miller], Ray [Lindwall], Neil [Harvey] and of course dear, dear Richie…
…I hope I’m not boring you all, dear readers.
“…and another thing…”
Janie’s LA Cabs receipt from that day is, for reasons unknown, still in her diary. £25 to pick up The Duchess, then pick up us, and take us all to Lord’s.
Another Saturday evening at The Questors with Janie’s mum, The Duchess.
The commercial arrangements for the evening will have been scrupulously fair:
The Duchess will have done The Questors tickets – we found out many years later she got a certain number of guest freebies per year with her subscription which she scrupulously deployed on us;
Janie and I will have done the interval drinks and dinner afterwards. On this occasion we went to Monty’s in Ealing – a place where you could get a late night tandoori or ruby and the Duchess would be allowed as many “last smokes” as she fancied without us being thrown out.
As always, The Questors will have been a very acceptable quality of production – the top end of am dram; semi-professional really.
And as always, The Questors has an exceptional archive – far better than most professional theatres, enabling you, dear reader, to read all about it, including the whole programme, without additional help from me, by clicking this link.
Janie and I have a very clear memory of the opening of Marriage Play, in which Bill Paterson’s character, Jack, repeatedly taunts his wife, played by Sheila Gish, with the phrase “I’m leaving you”. It’s a bit “Who’s Afraid…” meets “Dances of Death”, I suppose. But we both recall really enjoying Marriage Play, while we thought a lot less of the second half’s short play, Finding The Sun.
What did the critics think?
Our friend, Michael Billington, was not wild about the evening as a whole, much preferring Marriage Play:
A fine cast, including Jane Arnfield, Louise Bush, Paul Higgins, Michelle Joseph, Veronica Roberts, John Ramm, Simon Trinder, Al Nedjari, and Gary Lilburn, directed by Mike Alfreds.
Our friend, Michael Billington, was not so impressed, praising the acting but not the play, awarding a rare, mere, two stars:
I guess we could fall for “the oldest of reactionary canards” occasionally, especially when we went to the theatre after an early Friday evening supper at Harry Morgans.
The following day we went to Kim’s birthday party, which would for sure have lightened our mood after that dark play.
I think I booked this one because of the Weill/Brecht. I really like the songs from The Threepenny Opera and you don’t often see them on the Wigmore Hall listings. Janie likes a bit of Shostakovich, so we thought we’d give it a try.
The concert comprised:
Alfred Schnittke – Sonata No 1 for Violin and Piano
Dmitri Shostakovich – Sonata for Violin and Piano Op 134
Maurice Ravel – Kaddish
William Walton – Sonata for Violin and Piano
Kurt Weill, Simon Mulligan & Bertolt Brecht – Songs from “The Threepenny Opera”
In truth, I think this concert convinced us that 20th century music, on the whole, is not for us.
Here’s the first movement of the Schnittke, to give you an idea:
Try the last movement of the Shostakovich
I do recall rather liking the Kaddish, which I hadn’t heard before:
In truth, 25 years later, I remember little about this evening and/or these plays.
Unusual for us to go to the theatre on a Thursday evening, so something must have inspired us to do that. Possibly the secure knowledge that after my Washington trip the week before, Passover at my parent’s place the preceding weekend, and dinner with Anthea and Mitchell arranged for the next day, this would be our only chance to see this production. I’ll write some more about the Washington trip and those other events elsewhere, when the time feels right.
Still, something else must have inspired us to choose this twinning of short plays by writers we hadn’t heard of, with cast and creatives we also hadn’t heard of.
Theatricalia can’t help me with this one.
To the rescue, Mark Cook with this preview in The Guardian.
Janie and I are partial to a bit of David Mamet. We were also very excited to be seeing Zoe Wanamaker & Anna Chancellor (plus a young, then unknown, Lyndsey Marshal), directed by Phyllida Lloyd, early in the run at the Donmar Warehouse.
My memory and my single word log review…
pretentious
…suggests that we were a bit disappointed by the play.
Janie and I defer to the wisdom of the professional critics. The performances were good, we grant. But don’t attempt this play as am-dram unless you have three superb actresses to carry the evening.
