Started off badly with four out of five of the new ticket machines from Southern not working. Things got better when one of them sprang into life as I watched, presumably, these days, having remote software repair capability. The catch being that I was so surprised that I bought Travelcards rather simple returns to Waterloo. Several pounds donated to Southern.
On the platform we had two flashy black girls, fully kitted out in Epsom College sports gear. They said they were on their way home, wherever that might have been. Then another flashy black girl working the bar at the Young Vic, sufficiently flashy that we suspected her of being a wannabee luvvie, content to work the bar at a theatre until some proper work turned up.
In between, we had taken our picnic in the little park opposite the Old Vic, not busy but with its usual mixture of indigents, bright young things and normals.
Good atmosphere in the Young Vic with plenty of people of working age for once and plenty of people who looked a bit arty. House fairly full for this evening performance.
Open stage, with banks of not very comfortable seats on both the long sides. A large sliding, muslin tent sometimes containing the action and sometimes used to support change of personnel. But the action was dominated by a trapeze, to which Juliet Stevenson spent most of the hour and a half or so attached, attached by a harness a bit like a gent's swimming costume, and gliding about the stage with great aplomb. Lots of somersaults.
The play was a portrait of the recovery of a lady struck down by a stroke, seen mainly from her point of view. All the problems, frustrations and worries along the way, in which, not being a complete stranger to hospitals, I found the rather bossy, patronising & aggressively cheery behaviour of the young staff helping her along the way rather fun.
But while swinging around on the trapeze might have given us some feel for how she felt, having been an aviatrix and wing walker in her youth, it did rather dominate the proceedings, although one had to admire Stevenson, around 60 herself, for putting on the gymnastics night after night. I wondered how she held her body flat and straight for what seemed like quite long periods, when suspended by not much more than a belt. I don't think my back would have stood for it. There was also the feeling that it was not terribly dignified for an older lady to be doing such stuff. I dare say the Young Vic would say that that was part of the point. Having a stroke is not very dignified. But as I have said before, reference 1 being, as it happens, a recent example, in a play one does not have to be undignified to portray indignity. Or to be more precise, one does not have to be unpleasant in order to portray unpleasant. That is part of the skill set expected.
Quite a while ago now we saw her in 'Death and the Maiden' and the programme claims her for 'Happy Days', which we have seen twice over the last twenty years. Once Fiona Shaw but, annoyingly, I cannot find out who the other one was.
The programme mostly consists of the text of the play, written by one Arthur Kopit about 40 years ago. Hopefully I will get around to reading it.
With thanks to the exeunt magazine for the picture.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/ruminations.html.
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