This week I went to see Anything Goes at the Barbican.
It’s a dotty, tuneful musical cooked up by Cole Porter, PG Wodehouse and Guy Bolton in 1934. Sutton Foster’s (the female lead) reputation had spread across the Atlantic from Broadway where she is well known and she was cheered almost every time she opened her mouth. The audience were too young to recognise Felicity Kendall, playing a rich American trying to marry her daughter into the British aristocracy. (Spoiler: she doesn’t succeed.)
The theatre has 1,162 seats and was full. The bars were crowded in the interval. Few people wore masks. The good times are back – “blow, Gabriel, blow”, as Sutton Foster belts out at the beginning of Act II. At long last it’s business as usual in London. “Covid endgame predicted as vaccines give medics the edge”. (FTWeekend, 31 July, page 2)
There were no vaccination checks and many of the youngish audience would not have had a jab. Some of the audience may have been tourists. It would be hard to design a better incubation environment for an easily transmissible virus. Just one member of the audience with a new variant could spread it around London most efficiently by having a night at the theatre. “Scientists warn as pandemic enters dangerous new phase”. (FTWeekend, 31 July, page 8)
Note to self: must drink less to avoid alcohol-induced depression.