Tag: Anthony Bridges

Dinner With The Family by Jean Anouilh, The Questors Student Group, 10 July 1999

To the Questors with the Duchess of Castlebar (Janie’s mum) to see a student production.

No danger that The Duchess had to fork out for our tickets (I think she only took us to shows of any variety there on guest freebies).

Anouilh comedies tends to be quaint and within the grasp of student drama groups, so I suspect that the production was pretty good, but my log is silent on the matter.

Here is a link to The Questors archive resources on that production.

I escaped the duty to reciprocate the freebie tickets with a dinner, because Janie and I went on to Rupert Stubbs’s 40th birthday do on Sailing Barge Resourceful in Chiswick.

Resourceful, now relocated to the estuary as a tea house

Given that we had fed the multitudes the week before for The Duchess’s birthday…

Dinner With The Family: A 70th Birthday Do For The Duchess, 3 July 1999

…she could hardly complain.

The Rehearsal by Jean Anouilh, Questors Theatre, 8 February 1997

My log suggests that I lost the programme and therefore all record of this event, but thanks to those wonderful people at The Questors Theatre who seem to archive absolutely everything, I have been able to retrieve the programme and all the details of the cast and creatives – click here for the Questors archive link.

Click here for the Questors programme, just in case it is no longer available through the above link.

I have always had a soft spot for Anouilh, ever since I saw his Antigone at Alleyn’s in my first year of secondary school.

I must admit, though, that lighter, lesser Anouilh has not dated as well as his more serious work. The Rehearsal falls into the “lighter work” category. It seems extraordinary today that this play fell foul of the British theatre censors until the 1960s.

Still, my vague recollection of this production was that it was quite eye-catching and held our attention.

The diary is silent on where we ate afterwards.

The deal with Pauline on Questors nights was that she did the theatre tickets, Janie did the interval drinks and I did the dinners. No sign of me putting a credit card down for a fancy meal that night, so I’m guessing that we had a modest dinner at Wine & Moussaka, which I recall us doing occasionally after the Questors.

The Journalists by Arnold Wesker, The Questors Theatre, 7 December 1996

My log for this one reads:

Programme (and hence all details) missing.

Production OK but cluttered – much like the play.

But all is not lost – it turns out that The Questors Theatre has one of the best theatrical archives of their own productions on the planet (who knew?), so everything you ever wanted to know about this production (or indeed any Questors production) and more besides, is preserved. Click here for The Journalists.

Just in case anything ever goes awry there, I have uploaded the scan of the programme to here.

I was reminded of this play and production many years later when Janie and I saw Ink at the Almeida.

Ink by James Graham, Almeida Theatre, 17 June 2017

Ink was not cluttered, although I did get spluttered…

…but that’s another story.

We no doubt took Pauline on to Noughts & Crosses, or possibly Lisa’s, or possibly Wine & Moussaka afterwards.

Pauline will have done the Questors tickets, which was very generous of her (she didn’t have to pay anything for two guest tickets), Janie will have done the interval drinks and I will have sported the dinner. Fair dinkum.