Friendly Rivalry

Approximately half my life ago, I studied Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals as part of my A-Level English course. It was quite a fun play - written in something approaching contemporary English compared to all the Shakespeare I'd done in years past - and, as was the standard in my school (or with my teachers, at least) was 'read' in the form of a pre-performance script read-through. Various folks in the class were 'cast' as a particular character (with occasional 'understudies' defined for important parts, in case of absences), the the play was 'performed' around the table.

Every so often, The Rivals turns up in a London theatre, and I've been trying to see it for years. Unsuccessfully, it must be said, until last Friday... when a particular performance, at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, starring the great Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles, was putting on its penultimate evening show.

Annoyingly, it's been running since before Christmas and, at one point, I thought I was seeing it the week after I was made redundant. Even worse, when I was dragged back into the office for a final three days, I told my parents that they would be going to see The Rivals in my stead... but I was confused. The tickets I had at that point were for Tron Legacy.

Not that my parents were too disappointed - they loved the 3D spectacular - but it did kind of set the precedent for 'not getting tickets for The Rivals'.

In the end, I booked late on the Thursday night (or possibly early on the Friday morning), and popped uptown at the appropriate hour to pick up the tickets and have a quick wander before the performance began. From Haymarket, I traipsed past Trafalgar Square, to Leicester Square, then back to Piccadilly... venturing into HMV for a quick browse, all to kill time in what was one of those very rare instances where I got into town in very good time. Do I detect improvements in the Piccadilly line?

In HMV, I picked up a Wii game called Samurai Warriors: Katana, mistaking it for the new Samurai Warriors game which, in theory, was released months ago, and yet hasn't turned up in any shops I've been into. Turns out Katana is like the sword-wielding equivalent of something like Time Crisis or House of the Dead. Not very highly rated in reviews but, after a quick game over the weekend, I can say it's certainly better than 'mediocre'... certainly not one of the best Wii games ever, but fun nonetheless... and with free-roaming sequences, horse riding sequences, and firearms as secondary weapons, it seems to have a fair bit going for it.

But back to the theatre...

The Theatre Royal looks like a fairly average London theatre from the outside - the many (small) entrance doors are labelled for the section of the theatre they lead to (though the entrance hall is actually open, so one can use any door, then pick the most appropriate staircase) and, once into the theatre proper, it seems at once very small (perhaps that should be 'intimate'?) and quite enormous. Cinemas may originally have followed the palatial, temple-like template set by theatres, but they are now completely plain compared to the marble, gold leaf and frescoes that adorn any self-respecting theatre.

As a sidenote, I booked a ticket for the Stalls, because they tend to offer about the best view, and was annoyed - though absolutely not surprised - to find myself hit with a 'booking fee'. Bizarrely, though, £1 of this £4 surcharge goes to the theatre's restoration fund. I'm not quite sure how they work these things out but if I'm paying about £50 for a theatre ticket, of which £4 is simply for booking a ticket (which is surely a necessity?), and of that, only £1 is going to the theatre's restoration... what's the purpose of the remaining £3 of booking fee?

And why charge a booking fee at all? Why not just make the ticket £50, of which £1 goes toward the theatre's upkeep?

I've never understood 'booking fees', except inasmuch as the act of taking payment by credit or debit card actually costs the vendor money.

But anyway.

To cut a long blog post short, the performance was excellent... I'd only quibble that Penelope Keith was perhaps too good as Mrs Malaprop ("her select words so ingeniously misapplied, without being mispronounced", as Julia puts it, while Ms Keith's performance kept making me wonder if perhaps my understanding of the English language was at fault). Peter Bowles was utterly perfect as Sir Anthony Absolute - keeping his 'frenzy' in check, but implying its depth more than adequately. I was a little surprised that they were treated by the publicity as the only stars, considering the performance I saw featured Gerard Murphy as Sir Lucius O'Trigger and Tony Gardner as Faulkland. Perhaps not quite in the same league as Keith and Bowles, but well-known nonetheless. And, while Lydia Languish was played by a relative unknown (relative being the operative word - Robyn Addison has her fair share of credits, and is likely to get a lot more based on her performance here), Julia Melville was played by Annabel Scholey, who I eventually remembered as being a key player in the first season of Being Human. Captain Jack Absolute (what is it about the rank of Captain that attracts so many Jacks?) was played by Tam Williams, who - I learned by chance last night - was the videogame addicted killer in an overblown Lynda La Plante 'thriller' about the perils of online gaming, back in the late 90s. The production was pretty much full of familiar faces, so I was glad I'd picked up a programme and spent the interval leafing through and thinking "Ah, yes... that's where I know them from!"

The story wasn't exactly as I remember... but then, according to the programme, this version was essentially cobbled together from the three existing manuscripts by Sheridan. The original never made it past its opening night because it got slated for being too bawdy... and I suspect the incongruous (and silent) character of 'Whore' was from that draft. She didn't quite fit with the idea that Jack Absolute actually loved Lydia Languish... but then, did he? He made the point himself that he was keen to elope with her only after she came into her inheritance. Everyone remarked upon her beauty, but what evidence was there that young Jack Absolute cared for anything beyond her money, except for his references to Sir Anthony having married for love...?

Still, laughs aplenty... excellent performances all round... shame they stopped at two encores, as I'm sure the audience would have been delighted to keep clapping for several more.

Popped over to my folks again at the weekend, with my sister and niece down for another checkup at Great Ormond Street. Being over there is a strangely frustrating experience... it's almost impossible to have a conversation while young Kate is up and about but, as soon as she's put to bed for a while, everyone just starts reading newspapers or magazines. Bad enough when I'm the only guest... but when my sister is there as well, I really feel that I may as well not be there.

Which seems to be a bit of a running theme... Clearly two months of inactivity does not agree with me... When I first started looking for a job, straight out of high school, I spent a year pursuing my dream job... failed utterly... then took the first job that looked interesting in the Job Centre. When I resigned from that, it took me nine months to prepare myself for another job (yes, my first job seriously fucked with my head). Now, after sticking with the same job (essentially - my role changed quite dramatically) for eleven years, I'm starting to wonder if I need to get back into a bustling office environment as quickly as possible.

I don't exactly have a packed social calendar, I have very few friends, hang out with them infrequently, and this whole eHarmony thing is just getting depressing - each new group of 'matches' seems worse than the last, as if I'm already scraping the bottom of the barrel (which I sincerely hope is not the case) - but I'm back to doubting that I even want to be dating at the moment. Rare enough that I find someone I enjoy hanging out with... the idea of spending however long on emails only to find the person still is not who they seemed to be... isn't exactly appealing at the moment. There's a reason I don't tend to open myself up to new people until I know them well, and going against my nature in the hope of meeting someone online has been disconcerting... and previous experiences have never been great.