Failed to check the railway timetable properly and arrived at the station to find engineering works disrupting the Waterloo service. But we managed to get there and find a No.4 bus which got us to the Barbican in good time. On which bus we sat next to a lady and a young lady, presumably her daughter, who were on the same errand. Like BH, the lady had done the play for her A-level second string. Furthermore, the daughter was about to go to Guildhall next to Barbican to study classical saxophone, of which I had not before heard. We learned that for these purposes, you need just two of them, not the full range.
The show was in the lower, smaller theatre, more or less underneath the canteen. But it came with a very large stage, plenty of knee room in front of the rather basic seats, and a team of around a dozen players.
An accessible version for the modern audience, heavily cut and partially rewritten. But as a story about someone with too much power over those around him getting badly bitten by the jealousy disease, it worked very well. Perhaps the 'trouble at court', woodland frolic, resolution' formula, common in Shakespeare - and no doubt elsewhere - does indeed touch some primitive, Jungian chord. See reference 2.
But there were irritations. The opening seemed rather forced and silly. Dressing up the trial scene like a White House press conference with lectern and video repeat behind was clever, but there was too much of it. Again a bit forced and silly. But I liked doing the bear and the bear noises on screen. Most impressive.
Woodland frolic mostly rather tiresome, with Autolycus particularly so. I didn't like him or his performance at all. I didn't think the attempt to move the action to the 20th century worked at all and would have much preferred it left somewhere vague in the 16th or 17th century. Shepherd rather weak. Satyr's dance missing.
Otherwise, the king, his queen, Perdita and Paulina good.
Ending rather spoilt by the otherwise effective tableau vivant at the end going on for far too long.
On the way out, pleased to find that there was still at least one broad bean plant in the micro-allotment tub illustrated above. Just right of centre. For the last sighting, a bit less than a year ago, see reference 1.
With the Waterloo service damaged, we thought to try the Thameslink from Farrindon, which resulted in our taking a light dinner at the Three Compasses, which we had been about to pass up on the grounds that there was no English grub to be had, when we found it listed on the back of the Thai menu. Interesting establishment, possibly re-purposed from some wholesale operation to do with the nearby meat market. Interesting clientèle, rather noisy and very democratic. Perhaps the toffs only turn out during the week. Interesting also in that they sold what appeared to be a real ale with a green Watney badge attached - with my having thought that Watney's was long gone. While according to google: '... They are having their Watney’s branded pale ale brewed under licence at Sambrook’s, reasonably close to the original Watney’s brewery in London'. Along with some acid comments about the Watney's beer of old - while for myself, my recollection is that I got on OK with Watney's ordinary bitter, this at a time when lots of pubs did not sell warm beer at all.
Slow train to Wimbledon, surprised on the way by the density of housing across the river from Blackfriars, then a wait at Raynes Park where we tried, for the first time, the Wetherspoon's there, 'The Edward Rayne'. Busy, quite a lot of what looked like old-style local trade. Onto the train which contained a lot of drunks, oddly so for early evening and it was not at all clear where they had been to get in the state they were in. One young couple was very steamed up and excited, so much so that the lady next to us, with the air of someone who knew, told us that there would be no action to follow. They would fall asleep the moment their heads hit the pillows.
PS: after the event we learn that Edward Rayne was born in the US and was very important in the fashion shoe trade in this country in the middle decades of the last century. While some other Raynes owned some of the land on which Raynes Park was built, some decades previously. Not at all clear whether it was the same lot. Perhaps the Wetherspoon's pub names department thought we were getting a bit too into the heritage side of their pubs and their names, getting a bit too po-faced about it all, and was having a bit of fun with us. For po-faced see, for example, reference 5.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/citadine.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/myths-and-legends.html.
Reference 3: http://threecompassesthaifood.com/.
Reference 4: for our previous attempt on the play, see http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/winters-tale.html.
Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/more-travel-variations.html.
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