OK, so I met up with Joanna at Bertorelli's, and we sat at our table, excited about wining and dining before the showing of Arcadia. I had arrived first and thus was seated on the banquette (sp?) and she was facing me. Within about seven seconds of her joining me at the table, members of the waiting 'team' had banged into the back of Joanna's chair approximately eleven times, so we moved. Joanna, having been on the outside edge of the first table, reached the new table first and so got the coveted not-in-a-thoroughfare seat, but being nice, I didn't comment. Until now. But I'm not bitter.
At approximately 18:17 hours we ordered our food. It arrived at approximately 19:06. By this time I was about to have a hernia and had lost my appetite, although needless to say, when my tagliatelle carbonara (yes, I am that adventurous) finally reached me, I somehow managed to force it down in a matter of seconds. To the best of my knowledge, they didn't show Johnny 5 eating in Short Circuit, probably because, being a robot, he doesn't eat or have a digestive system, but if Johnny 5 had eaten tagliatelle carbonara, he would have looked a bit like me. Although I have better boobs.
The manager was very apologetic about the delay we had suffered and, without us having to ask for a discount, gave us our wine on the house, which was brrrrrrrrilliant and definitely worth the stress, although obviously I then wished I'd ordered a more expensive bottle. So we paid for our food and went across the road to the theatre. I then got embroiled in a sarcastic exchange with the woman on the door who insisted on double checking that her colleague had checked my ticket correctly and then looked at me accusingly when she discovered that my ticket stub had not been torn off, as if I was deliberately trying to enter the theatre with my stub still intact. What purpose this random act of subterfuge might serve, I have no idea. Then after a further stress (where Joanna and I were trying to order interval drinks and the announcer said 'This evening's performance will begin in one minute' and we panic bought wine and ditched the Minstrels idea, even though I wanted chocolate WAY more than I wanted booze, and then hotfooted it back to our seats only to find that the curtain didn't go up for at least seven or eight more minutes, during which time elderly theatre goers wobbled in as if going for a stroll, not a care in the world, and I wondered (not for the first time) if my perception of punctuality is actually flawed and if I should realign it so that it is more consistent with the remaining 99% of Western civilization), we were finally in our massively uncomfortable seats and the show began.
And it really wasn't that good. Everyone has been raving about it, so with irritating yet characteristic contrariness, I sat there looking for flaws, but it sadly wasn't difficult to find them. The playwright, Tom Stoppard, is undoubtedly very, very clever indeed. I mean, seriously, seriously clever. But why does he feel the need to ram his intelligence down everyone's throats all the time? Sure, do it once. Write one play so that everyone knows how brilliant you are. But then, after that, must you keep doing it? I was sad, because there were lines in the play that were brilliantly funny, moments of Wodehouse that I just wished would continue, but then he had to go all high-horsey and talk about Fermat's Last Theorum (does that Need To Be Capitalised?) and algebra and academia and science vs. nature and all these things, which are all valid preoccupations of course, but must they all be crammed into one play, along with the whole 1800s vs. modern day setting? It was all just a bit exhausting. And not that well cast, IMHO. But what do I know? And maybe I missed the best bit while I was asleep. The carbonara caught up with me at the end of Act 1 and I had a bit of a snooze during what was inevitably the key scene that had all the critics wetting their pants. Anyway, everyone else loved it and I'm glad I went.
On our way out I noticed that Dr Robert Winstone of Child of Our Time fame was in the audience, which made me perk up, but then this morning I found out that Mick Jagger had also been in the audience just a few rows further forward, which made even my celeb spot feel markedly B list. So - another night out in London. Off t'country in a minute and can't wait. See you on the other side.
No comments:
Post a Comment