Stopped on our way from Waterloo to have our picnic in the Festival Hall, being entertained along the way by street dancers who seemed to have colonised the basement space beneath us, rather in the way of the energetic skateboarders that used to occupy an covered space outside. Maybe they still do. We continued to like the unpretentious hanging art.
Onto the theatre which seems to have been quite recently, quite smartly refurbished. Quite decent white wine in the basement bar, if a little dear. Steeply raked seats, more than half empty for this matinée performance, looking down on a stage which I thought was rather too large for the show. The ensemble did not know how to use it.
The set was a smart white interior - which probably bore no relation to the set of the Oxbridge don of half a century ago, for whom the play was written. Seemed much more like a living room in a refurbished house in Islington - with the only hint of Oxbridge being some pointed windows. And we did have tasteful light classical music to grace the movement from one scene to the next.
We were told that this was the first production which used an entirely young cast, as indicated by the script and which I thought was a mistake. The two young dons were not very donnish, although the drippy, philologist one was much the better of the two. Perhaps Hampton's own experience with linguists at Oxford meant that he could breathe a bit of life into this role. The two ladies - as shown above - did well enough but I found the bearded author irritating. He failed to pull off the trick of playing a pain without being one. I wondered whether he has used the irritating author of the Lewis episode called 'Old School Ties' as his starting point.
The performance seemed rather lifeless for much of the time, with what seemed like long pauses between some of the dialogue, despite some clever clogs stuff which reminded me of the near contemporary 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead', for which see reference 1.
The script included lots of sex talk of a sort which perhaps seemed very daring on the stage of 1970, but which seemed a bit tiresome now. There were also a lot of cigarettes, but there did not seem to be much smoke and there was probably no inhalation. I bet they managed that bit better back in 1970 too.
I rather enjoyed the two tricks with guns, while BH did not.
Hampton knew his Molière and it seems that the play was a cunningly contrived echo of this last's 'Le Misanthrope ou l'Atrabilaire amoureux'. But we didn't know our Molière and the contrivance fell a little flat for us. Beyond my thinking that a better parallel was perhaps the assembly of stock characters, after the fashion of commedia dell'arte, to which Molière was also closely related, but with Hampton and Callow between them failing to breathe much life into the stock.
Good programme, which, among other things, told us that there were twice as many people on the creative team as there were actors. And that, presumably, does not include menials like stage carpenters. But I think the current practice of giving small roles to the understudies for the big roles is much better than having them stashed away in attics where they get no stage time and don't get to know how the thing really works.
Bad tickets, in that mine appeared to come from some agency which could only get us to Row M, while managing to rack the face value up by a third. Not sure why I used an agency as I usually try to use the theatre itself. But at least we were able to move a lot closer to the action for the second half.
I still find it hard to see why the thing was quite a hit back in 1970.
On exit it was not yet 1700, too early to dine, too old to sit and soak for a couple of hours, so we retraced our steps to Waterloo, to be irritated on the way by the Mandela statue still being in a rather unsuitable location at the top of the steps to the Festival Hall. A location which I put down to Thatcher spite, but which ought now to be put right. What about somewhere in the large open space to the south of the hall?
Train very full, although a polite young Englishman, unusually, stood for BH. Train stayed full all the way to Epsom, with the usual clearing out at Raynes Park not materialising on this occasion.
More or less by chance we dined at 'Plaice to Eat', at the end of the town centre end of the passage between the station and the town centre, the first time that we have used the place under current management. And very good it was too, including the largest piece of haddock I have bought in such a place for a while. See reference 2.
PS: it seems that Hampton went on to become a very successful adapter of other people's stories and plays for films and television.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/r.html.
Reference 2: http://www.plaicetoeat.co.uk/. Note the gentle and relaxing sea sounds.
Group search key: tpb.
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