Example: Hedda Gabler. The National touring performance. Now, not coming to a theatre near you (unless you're at this moment in Dublin). We travelled to see this in Northampton. Except we didn't see it. Someone needed an emergency ambulance half way through, and the performance was cancelled. We tried to see it again in Milton Keynes last week. When there was snow. The performance was cancelled to stop us travelling to the theatre. A fact I found out, after I'd travelled to the theatre with a car load of ticket holders.
Example: The Birthday Party. Pintery offerings at the old comedy theatre, London. Plot: Disturbing happenings in a front room. Glad it isn't my front room, although it sets the nerve endings a-tingling, simply by knowing that everything chilling and disturbing happening in your front room is also very ordinary. Would you like a cup of tea with your toast?
Example: Passage to India. Northampton. I didn't go. I gave up my ticket to the Travelling Aunty who had a jolly good evening out with the gritlets. The report back was, 'like the book except on a stage'.
Example: Imperium. RSC, Stratford. Brilliant. I loved every minute of it, this study of Cicero's life, played wonderfully by Richard McCabe, and taken in great gulps over two Saturdays. The construction of the episodes, by zooming in on the players entering Cicero's life, made for unputdownable theatre. I particularly thrilled at Caesar, thoroughly unctuous, played like a horror show that you can't stop watching. I could watch it all again.
Example: Twelfth Night. RSC Live/Cineworld screening. Strangely, I didn't enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed other interpretations of this play, although Adrian Edmonson is a treat to watch. Here, too much emphasis on Victorian singalongs for my liking. But, having paid a dollop and a half for sets like that, I don't suppose you can do much else but use them to put on a musical.
Example: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Young Vic/NT Live. (Not Live at All / Encore screening.) I don't think I even tried to get tickets for this live. Sienna Miller without her clothes on? I don't have that amount of money. Thank goodness then, for the Encore screenings, suited for hand-to-mouth merchants like me. All the cast were excellent. The set was perfect. Costumes, sound, lighting, the lot, an example of great professional theatre.
Not theatre, but like it: Knickerdrawer Notebooks, stitched with story in mind. Every book is a book to play with: story, drama, character and, um, theatre. As soon as you hold one of these in your hands, it's a world waiting to be transformed.
(I have to do some marketing somewhere. This weekend, Central Milton Keynes, Stall 13. Vintage and Handmade Show. Come and see me and let's talk drama.)
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