Tag: Colin Horne

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 Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen, Questors Theatre, 15 October 1999

A successful night at The Questors with the Duchess (Janie’s mum). I wrote,

very good,

in my log, which will be a comment on the play/production rather than The Duchess’s conduct.

Janie and I subsequently saw a superb production of this play at The Donmar.

I recall having some reservations about seeing an amateur production of this great play, but actually The Questors had actors and creatives of sufficient quality to carry this work well.

Janie’s diary suggests that we went to eat at a place named Rastificia afterwards, on Ealing Broadway, at 10:30. Sounds like Jamaican food from the name.

Just what Janie and I will have needed on a Friday evening after a long week’s work. No doubt the waiters made a fuss of The Duchess and no doubt she wanted to stay for one more cigarette at the end of the meal, so we’ll have got home very late indeed.

Also, no doubt, the deal was that The Duchess did the theatre tickets, Janie did the interval drinks and I did the meal. [Note to historians – The Duchess got several pairs of guest tickets free each year with her membership of The Questors – I’m pretty sure we didn’t go any more often than the using up of the freebies allowed].

“Parsimony is the best policy” – The Duchess of Castlebar