Category: Theatre

Bright Young Things

I’m not an expert on anything; sometimes I know a bit or can express myself lucidly. I deployed this as an oil futures broker. Yesterday a friend asked me how she should address formally (on the envelope) the divorced wife of a younger son of a marquess who has subsequently remarried.

The Play’s the Thing

Over the years I have seen many plays in theatres great and small. The first play I saw professionally staged was Seán O’Casey‘s The Plough and the Stars at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 1966; I still remember it.

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Oliver Goldsmith

It was a good Grand National for Ireland. The winner, Tiger Roll, is trained at Summerhill in Co Meath on my sister’s doorstep. Another Irish horse came second at 66/1, Magic of Light, trained by Jessica Harrington, my brother-in-law’s sister. Ireland has always punched above its weight and not just on the turf.

The Fourth Wall

The fourth wall, as you know, is the space which separates a performer from the audience; or, if you will, the conceptual barrier between a fictional work and its viewers or readers.

Coo!

Asphodel Meadows sounds like a character in Gone with the Wind. ‘I do declare, Miss Asphodel,  – you’re pretty as a peach in that gown.’

Five More Pinter

The Pinter season continues at the Pinter Theatre. On Friday I was taken to see five of his one-acters. It was especially interesting for at least two reasons.

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Company

I remember with nostalgia Elaine Stritch and Donald Sinden in Two’s Company on television in the late 1970s. She played a successful American author and he was her very British butler. The only other thing I remember is that she, in real life, lived in the Savoy.

Burke and Hare

Recently I have seen nine one act plays by Noël Coward and Miss Julie by Strindberg at the tiny Jermyn Street Theatre; all excellent. Last night Jermyn Street continued its winning streak.

If We Were Villains

ML Rio’s first novel, published last year, has been compared to Donna Tartt’s debut, A Secret History. Not a good omen as I didn’t think Secret History cut the mustard.