Translations by Brian Friel, Questors Theatre, 12 May 2001

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.

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.