Views From An Aisle Seat

Having just seen the wonderful Wise Children at the Old Vic (touring soon, highly recommended) I was reminded what a unique and distinctive director we have in Emma Rice.

Her off the wall approach to what is sometimes unpromising material really is a joy. Her stage version of Brief Encounter ( an adaptation of the film rather than the original short play by Noel Coward ) was funny, moving and very very theatrical.

Who would expect a staged version of some old episodes of Steptoe and Son to be the magical evening that it was ? I was astonished by it. Wise Children is to some extent about theatre and managed to resurrect in me some of the magic I felt, as a child who was rarely taken to the theatre, enjoying the pantomime at the imposing Empire Theatre in Liverpool.

Add to this some entrancing shows in the Sam Wanamaker theatre during her short time in charge of the Globe and you realise that she is one of the most exciting of our current crop of directors. I look forward to some more magic from her new company.

As the Pinter at the Pinter productions are the theatrical event of the season, here’s a Pinter quiz. Identify the plays in which these pairs of characters appear.

Lenny & Sam

Edward & Flora

Riley & Rose

Ben & Gus

Goldberg & McCann

Deeley & Kate

Aston & Mick

Jerry & Emma

Hirst & Spooner

Roote & Lush

Scroll down for the answers.

Lenny and Sam are in The Homecoming

Edward and Flora are in A Slight Ache

Riley and Rose are in The Room

Ben and Gus are in The Dumb Waiter

Goldberg and McCann are in The Birthday Party

Deeley and Kate are in Old Times

Aston and Mick are in The Caretaker

Jerry and Emma are in Betrayal

Hirst and Spooner are in No Man’s Land

Roote and Lush are in The Hothouse

The casting is incredible. In the first two ( of seven ) collections of short plays by Harold Pinter we have Jonjo O’Neill, Paapa Essiedu, Antony Sher, Kate O’Flynn, Russell Tovey, David Suchet and ( the voice of ) Michael Gambon, with a massive line-up of big names still to come in the later collections.

Pinter One is a pretty grim evening with political oppression and torture as its principal subjects with just a little comedy break in a short sketch featuring an anachronistic Donald Trump. The final play, One For The Road, is deeply disturbing and left me wanting to head for the nearest bar for a stiff drink.

Pinter Two consists of two plays which are much more light-hearted. While I enjoyed them, they did seem rather dated. Both written in the sixties, they present attitudes to sexual relationships which seem like historical curiosities today. I’m really looking forward to collections three to seven.

As usual, identify the play and the speaker:

1. The crowd has found the door into the secret garden. Now they will tear up the flowers by the roots, strip the borders and strew them with paper cups and broken bottles.
2. I’ve never heard him called Mr Britten before. Mr Britten. Makes him sound like a body-builder.
3. If you want to learn about Stalin, study Henry VIII. If you want to learn about Mrs Thatcher, know about Hollywood.
4. I heard somebody say we were waiting for Wood. He seems very unpunctual. They were waiting for him yesterday.
5. She was in a very real sense the tallest writer I have ever known. Which is not to say that her stories were tall. They were not. They were short.
6. If all my operas are concerned with the loss of innocence, well, in this one the innocence is – the old man’s.
7. – Everywhere one looks, decadence. I saw a bishop with a moustache the other day.   –  It had to come.
8. I count examinations, even for Oxford and Cambridge, as the enemy of education.
9. Which is man and which is myth ? Is this fact or is it lies ? What is truth and what is fable ? Where is Ruth and where is Mabel ?
10. Mais les chaussures, monsieur, pas sur le lit. Et vos pantalons, s’il vous plait.

Scroll down for the answers.

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.