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.
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.
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.
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.
Jamie Lloyd has an ambitious undertaking at the Harold Pinter Theatre. He is putting on a six month season of Pinter’s one act plays. On Saturday afternoon I was taken to two of them: The Lover (1961) and The Collection (1962).
Appropriately, bottles of Jameson and Hennessy rub shoulders alongside the programme for Aristocrats by Brian Friel. I went to the matinee on Saturday.
My memory plays tricks. I thought I watched Upstairs, Downstairs upstairs in the library at Barmeath with a TV supper on this tray and my terrier squashed beside me in an armchair. That was how I watched lots of other TV while my mother and grandparents were downstairs in the dining room.
Yesterday morning’s Ancient World Breakfast Club (AWBC) talk was given by Dr Aggeliki Kompoholi who teaches at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Nine years ago I’d like to have seen Red at the Donmar. Alfred Molina played Mark Rothko, Eddie Redmayne his assistant (Ken) and Michael Grandage directed. Tant pis, I missed it but it’s on again in the West End now with most of that dream team – Molina and Grandage.