Author Archives: Aisle Seat

The quotations were from only four plays :

1. Headmaster                           40 Years On
2. Auden                                    The Habit of Art
3. Irwin                                      The History Boys
4. Dorothy                                 People
5. Tempest                                40 Years On
6. Britten                                   The Habit of Art
7. Headmaster & Franklin          40 Years On
8. Hector                                    The History Boys
9. Headmaster                           40 Years On
10. Posner                                    The History Boys

They are always charming and helpful and friendly, those people who show you to your seat at the theatre and sell you your programme. Nowadays they often ask you to turn off your phone or march around carrying a picture of a phone with a big red cross through it. So far, so good but what happens when the show begins ? They all disappear, presumably to stock up their ice cream trays for the interval. Sadly, though, auditoria now really need to be policed. When someone starts reading their emails or taking photographs or video it should not be left to their neighbouring audience members to stop them. We need staff members discreetly patrolling and taking action when inconsiderate audience members behave in a distracting or annoying manner. It’s not just phones. On a recent visit to the Peacock Theatre in London the whole row in front of me, who all seemed to know each other, talked amongst themselves and were laughing and jeering ( inappropriately ) throughout the first act. When I left at the interval ( so angry I could not have enjoyed act two even if the problem was dealt with ) and reported the matter to a staff member they were very concerned and looked like they were going to deal with it. It should never have happened, though. A staff member in the auditorium would have noticed this straight away and nipped it in the bud.

Another tough one. Identify the plays and, if you can, the characters.

1. Nobody makes it stick like Horace that you’re a long time dead – dust and shadow, and no good deeds, no eloquence, will bring you back.
2. The search still goes on for the escaped madman who is on the run in Essex.
3. The reason footballers are yobs may be nothing to do with being working class, or with financial greed, or with adulation, or even with being footballers. It may be simply that football attracts a certain kind of person, namely yobs.
4. Undertake sun hollyhocks frankly sun pelican crash ?
5.  Each individual coin spun individually is as likely to come down heads as tails and therefore should cause no surprise each individual time it does.
6.  But surely a hermit who takes a newspaper is not a hermit in whom one can have complete confidence.
7.  The Plastic People of the Universe played ‘Venus in Furs’ from Velvet Underground and I knew everything was basically OK.
8. At the third stroke it will be nine two and fifty seconds ( Pip Pip Pip )
9.  – I assure you I am Bulgarian as he is.          –  He is Rumanian.         –  They are the same place. Some people call it the one, some the other.
10. The idea that all the people locked up in mental hospitals are sane while the people walking about outside are all mad is merely a literary conceit.

1.    Housman      The Invention of Love
2.    Radio      The Real Inspector Hound
3.    McKendrick      Professional Foul
4.    Baker      Dogg’s Hamlet
5.    Guildenstern       Rosencrant and Guildenstern Are Dead
6.    Lady Croom      Arcadia
7.    Jan      Rock and Roll
8.    Gladys      If You’re Glad I’ll Be Frank
9.    Carr & Cecily      Travesties
10.    Doctor      Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

Do you need to find an actor with a massive nose if you want to stage a production of ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ ?  Do you have to be Danish to play Hamlet or Illyrian to play Orsino ? Where on earth do you find a woman with three buttocks for your production of ‘Candide’ ?

Anyone can play anyone. It’s acting.

None of these quizzes are easy. You’ll have to be a real Shaw scholar to score highly on this one.

Can you name the speaker and the play in each case ? Scroll down for the answers.

1. There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everyone guesses.
2. There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
3. I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.
4. I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.
5. God help England if she had no Scots to think for her.
6. Imagination is the beginning of creation.
7. Eton is a boy farm where we are sent because we are nuisances at home, and because in after life, whenever a Duke is mentioned, we can claim him as an old schoolfellow.
8. If parents would only realise how they bore their children.
9. I don’t believe in morality. I’m a disciple of Bernard Shaw.
10. What is middle class morality ? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.

1. Crofts          Mrs Warren’s Profession
2. Tanner         Man and Superman
3. Undershaft         Major Barbara
4. Liza          Pygmalion
5. Proteus          The Apple Cart
6. Serpent          Back to Methusaleh
7. Tanner          Man and Superman
8. Hypatia          Misalliance
9. Louis          The Doctor’s Dilemma
10. Doolittle          Pygmalion

A year has gone by since the last set of awards. It’s time for some new ones. They go to . . .

An Ideal Husband               Vaudeville

This was the highlight of the Vaudeville’s Oscar Wilde season. Everything about the production was spot on but what a joy to see Edward Fox and Susan Hampshire bringing the house down with their masterful delivery of some of Wilde’s best jokes. They share the award.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore            Noel Coward

Martin McDonagh gets the award here. Since writing this play he has gone on to hit the Hollywood big time with Three Billboards but this play, which begins with a dead cat and ends with a stage filled with dismembered corpses, is a comic masterpiece which was brilliantly revived here by Michael Grandage.

Miss Littlewood                                      RSC

A quickfire resume of Joan Littlewood’s life, making clear her importance to twentieth century theatre without being at all reverential. The style is light, engaging and funny. Some terrific dancing.

Songs for Nobodies                        Wilton’s Music Hall

Bernadette Robinson takes this award. Her one-woman show has a brilliant premise. Imagine the mere mortals who met or worked with legends such as Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Maria Callas and Edith Piaf and let them tell the stories of their encounters with the big stars. Combine this with perfect performances, in character, of some of these singers’  greatest songs. Absolutely brilliant.

Girl From The North Country            Old Vic

I want to use the word’ beautiful’ to describe this show. It’s not a word that is often applied to theatrical productions but I think it’s the right one here. It sounds like a terrible idea to produce a musical based on the songs of Bob Dylan. They don’t seem to lend themselves to the musical genre. What Conor McPherson has written is more of a play with songs than a West End musical and the result is beautiful. It is moving and exhilarating. The performances are magical. It is a perfect theatrical gem. I’ve seen it twice and I want to see it again. Awards to all involved.

School of Rock                   New London Theatre / Gillian Lynne Theatre

Just a lot of fun but strangely moving at times. Incredible young talent.

Slaves of Solitude          Hampstead Theatre

A very clever piece. Who would have thought that a boarding house in Henley-on-Thames in 1943 would be the right setting for a play to address the current state of the nation ? Playwright Nicholas Wright and director Jonathan Kent get the awards here.

If you can identify the following quotations ( character and play ) you can count yourself a Wilde aficionado. Scroll down for the answers.

1. If the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them ?
2. The English country gentleman, galloping after a fox – the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
3. Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.
4. We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.
5. I can’t understand this modern mania for curates.
6. I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
7. Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.
8. Fortunately, in England at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.
9. Between men and women there is no friendship possible.
10. I have never heard any man mention his brother. The subject seems distasteful to most men.

Some of these were really difficult.

1.     ALGERNON       The Importance of Being Earnest
2.    LORD ILLINGWORTH       A Woman of No Importance
3.    MABEL CHILTERN       An Ideal Husband
4.    LORD DARLINGTON      Lady Windermere’s Fan
5.    LADY MARKBY      An Ideal Husband
6.    LORD GORING    An Ideal Husband
7.    LADY MARKBY     An Ideal Husband
8.    LADY BRACKNELL     The Importance of Being Earnest
9.    LORD DARLINGTON      Lady Windermere’s Fan
10.    GWENDOLEN     The Importance of Being Earnest