Tag: Nick Hawker

The Balcony by Jean Genet, Questors Theatre, Followed By Dinner At Gascons Ealing, 28 January 2000

Possibly the least said about this one the better. Naturally Janie and I would have been with the Duchess. Naturally she will have treated us to her theatre tickets (comps), while Janie and I will have done the interval drinks and dinner.

My log reads:

tame – we left at half time.

This will have been a collective and unanimous decision. It was quite a long play – Janie had booked Gascons for 10:30 – possibly with a bit of persuasion for the late booking. In any case, we were probably all ready for our din-dins after 90 minutes or so of Genet.

The Questors, being the Questors, has all the details, including a downloadable scan of the programme, available for all to see – click here.

I don’t think the meal afterwards was redemptive of the evening. Neither Janie nor I can remember much about Gascons in Ealing. The Duchess was probably in a foul mood because she hadn’t had value for (lack of) money out of those three Questors comps.

“Waste not, want not…”

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.