Started off well with three people in the ticket office at Epsom Station and no customers to be seen, so I was able to buy my ticket from a person rather than a machine.
Got to the ramp down to the National Theatre, to find a line of coaches parked there, perhaps accounting for the large numbers of school boys milling around river side. Perhaps they were down for the Macbeth, which we had avoided on the grounds that the ticket office had been unable to tell us whether the production was going to be in modern dress, which we do not usually like. I think, as it turned out, it was modern dress, so despite ticket office ignorance, we got to the right result.
Parked my carcase (a phrase we nearly heard in the proper, Joan Hickson version of 'A Body in the Library' last night, prompting the thought that this bit of slang was still alive when I was young but was now more or less extinct) against a bit of arty concrete wall, providing access to the sun, shelter from the wind and a good view of Sir Larry, to take my chopped egg sandwiches, something I have not taken for a while. No idea why not as I rather like them.
Onto the bar, where the cheerful barmaid explained that the (not very well reviewed) previews of the show ran to nearer four hours than the three they had got it down to now, still rather too long for my older attention & sitting still span of around two hours. On the other hand, we now had a long interval at about half time and a short interval at about three quarter time, so I had two escape hatches.
Theatre reasonably full, mostly rather middle class and arty looking. Sprinkling of working age. To my left I had a reasonably posh couple, to my right a pensioner outing. I had to explain to the posh gent. about Woods Ware in Beryl Green being absolutely necessary for a proper setting of this period. He knew nothing about it, and as it turned out, the otherwise clever set did not include it. The production noticed at reference 3 did rather better in this respect.
The play was set in a seedy club in Soho, a London version of the sort of Parisian dive that Simenon knew, loved and sent Maigret into. Full of all kinds of sponges, drunks and other undesirables. A sort of three hour long sketch, with some good lines, some good laughs, but no real action. Issues, in so far as there were any, all rather dated now. Altogether much too long and I availed myself of the three quarter time escape hatch into the afternoon sun.
But not before I had attempted to count the cast, on the various occasions on which they lined up to be counted. Working with groups of six, I could not get a better fix than somewhere between 25 and 27. Not good enough.
Another cheerful waitress at the Cabin at Waterloo, where once again she did not know that calvados was on the menu. I think I may have been served from the same bottle which served on the occasion noticed at reference 4.
Spotted a small clump of cowslips at the bottom of the western embankment at Stoneleigh. I feel sure that I have noticed them before, perhaps confusing them with the rather large oxslips, but search this morning fails to find anything.
PS: quite rare for me not to go the distance. Not sure now what made the difference on this occasion, a good effort on a thin play.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-unfinished-journey.html.
Reference 2: http://hannahmills.co.uk/portfolio/theatre/absolute-hell.html. The source of the snap taken from a 2012 production, not the one involving Dame Judi, but both of which passed us by unseen. Set quite different, two characters on the right quite similar. Did it work better than the current production?
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/dressing-up.html.
Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/trio-sunday.html.
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