Our friend, Michael Billington, suggested that this play was not as good as Roy Williams earlier material and that he needed to branch out a bit. I think he was probably right, as we really went for some of William’s later plays even more than this one, but it was good enough to get us hooked:
Despite the fact that we thought it was excellent, our friend, Michael Billington, really didn’t like it, bemoaning the fact that the only Synge that ever gets revived is this one.
An early example of John Random organising an Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner (gathering of 1990s NewsRevue writers) by e-mail, in John’s inimitable style.
The day after the event, the following e-mail arrived from Random:
Thank you all those came to The Cafe Rouge and to those that didn’t, hope to see you next time, whenever that is. You missed a great evening, especially the surprise visit of Bill Clinton who interrupted his golf game to come over and say how much he’d enjoyed Billy Don’t Be A Hero (February 1994) no he didn’t.
John was no doubt referring to this lyric of mine – quite possibly because Mike Hodd had waxed lyrical [did you see what I did there?] about it at the dinner.
I think I have identified, from the e-mail addresses, all the people to whom John wrote. Presumably not all attended, given the words John chose. Anyway, here is the Random hit list from June 2001:
Me
Random
Jonny Hurst
Graham Robertson
Mike Hodd
Jasmine Birtles
Barry Grossman
Sheila Hyde
John Cowen
Colin Stutt
Neil Watson
Terry Franks
“Ivan Shakespeare” – presumably Elspeth, Ivan’s partner, who only attended once or twice but I suspect that John kept her informed on the circulation list, regardless of whether or not she was attending, for quite some time.
Debbie Barham – I don’t remember Debbie ever attending one of these dinners; she was already very seriously ill with anorexia by the time Ivan Shakespeare died. I had stayed in touch with her, sporadically, by e-mail, as had John, presumably. Debbie’s trademark “skcollob.win-uk.net” e-mail domain name was one of a kind. Like me, for business reasons, in the very early e-mail days, she’d gone with a WinNet e-mail account so she could name her own domain. Mine was sensibly corporate, whereas Debbie’s was bollocks backwards. Typical.
This was an unusual double-bill of short plays at the Orange Tree, both women-oriented, I think directed by some young women on an apprenticeship scheme.
We rather enjoyed it.
The Women Of Troy is hardly a bundle of laughs. But the second play was an interesting take on modern web-based technologies, quite prescient I should think from the turn of the century if we were to see it again today.
I can only find one local review, which rated the evening pretty highly:
Excellent cast, led by Ron Cook. We loved Closer, so were keen to see more Patrick Marber, who directed this one himself (not always the best idea…) Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry.
Nicholas de Jongh did not like it, awarding the production the dreaded blob:
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:
Clubland de Jongh Standard 20 Jun 2001 Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Clubland Myerson Independent 20 Jun 2001 The Independent (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Clubland Billington Guardian better 23 Jun 2001 The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
