Author Archives: Aisle Seat

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

It’s hard to time one’s arrival at a theatre. Problems with public transport, unpredicatable traffic and parking difficulties make delays likely and it is wise to plan to arrive in good time. So, if you do arrive quite early, what do you find ? Well, very often it is a small, crowded front of house area, a tiny bar with few seats and no admission to the auditorium until ten minutes before the show begins. Managers, you’ve got an empty auditorium. Let us in. We can sit and chat or read our programmes away from the foyer crush.

Sometimes it becomes obvious why entry is so late. There is some kind of pre-show presence onstage. I don’t mean a proper pre-show, such as a band playing or some jugglers or whatever. I mean an actor or two, performing some task ( knitting or reading a book, for example ) or just sitting there. Understandably, actors don’t want to be doing this for half an hour or so. There is a simple solution. Ditch this kind of pre-show. It adds nothing. I’d rather have my seat a little earlier.

How many Grand Theatres, Lyric Theatres, Empire Theatres and Theatres Royal do you know ? They are all over the place. Not to mention all the Playhouses and New Theatres. But do you know where the following uniquely named theatres are located ?

1.   Belgrade
2.   Lowry
3.   Northcott
4.   Plowright
5.   Sherman
6.   Stephen Joseph
7.   Nuffield
8.   Gordon Craig
9.   Hexagon
10.   Yvonne Arnaud

The locations are:

Belgrade                Coventry

Lowry                     Salford

Northcott               Exeter

Plowright               Scunthorpe

Sherman                Cardiff

Stephen Joseph     Scarborough

Nuffield                 Southampton

Gordon Craig        Stevenage

Hexagon               Reading

Yvonne Arnaud     Guildford

Another gem of a theatre with an interesting programming policy. There is always lots of new writing here but this theatre’s speciality recently has been the presentation of rarely performed works from the early twentieth century. In recent years we have had an eye-opening production of Sheppey by Somerset Maugham, a wonderful, vibrant production of Rattigan’s French Without Tears and a trio of early plays by George Bernard Shaw ( Widowers’ Houses, The Philanderer, Misalliance ), directed with great panache by Paul Miller. The place is tiny. The tickets are not expensive. How do they do it ?

I’ve heard a lot about Wilton’s since its restoration but it didn’t prepare me for the sheer magic of the place. You reach it down a narrow alleyway off a small side street near St Katherine’s Dock. It is a little like stepping back into Dickensian London. The buildings are old ( 1690s ) and have had various uses, including an ale house and a Methodist mission, but from the mid 19th century until 1881 it was a music hall and it is as a music hall that it has been restored. The foyer space consists of a labyrinth of rooms, all now bars and cafes and the atmosphere is excited and lively. The real glory of the place, however, is the auditorium which gives new meaning to the word ‘atmospheric’. It is an absolute gem.

I saw Les Enfants Terribles performing The Terrible Infants and the show suited the venue perfectly. A dark and intricate mixture of song, story-telling and puppetry, the show is by turns hilarious, shocking and strangely moving. Our thanks should go to John Earl, John Betjeman, Spike Milligan and all the others who campaigned and raised money for the restoration. For a detailed history go to wiltons.org.uk/heritage/history It’s fascinating.