The Union Theatre is near London Bridge, so this was the usual trip from Covent Garden. Or so I thought! I should never have claimed mastery of the TfL planner: it went nuclear, and cancelled my freedom pass. I have great confidence in my freedom pass. I stride through the gate without slowing down. Which is quite painful if the gate doesn't open. The Southeastern (and later on the Tube) staff were very sympathetic and helpful. I got a 'code 30', which they said meant my card had been cancelled. If I was paranoid, I might think someone was secretly picking on me. But I'm not. I know it's the TfL Planner computer picking on me. It picked on tens of thousand of Oyster users a couple of months ago, probably looking for me. Don't tell the TfL Planner, but I went straight round the Post office the next morning for a replacement. It's a very valuable object to have. The reactions of the Post Office staff suggested this is not an unusual happening. There must be lots of us out there offending the TfL Planner.
I think I really have found the secret of filling fringe theatres. If I don't book, the Dark Forces of the Universe (the TfL Planner is only one such force) immediately fill the theatre. My alternate (as American usage has it) was close by, half-an-hour later, so I gritted my teeth, held my breath longer than they could, and got a last minute cancellation. It takes more than the Dark Forces to frustrate my well-laid plans. I expect if I hadn't planned an alternative (as English usage has it), then no last minute return would have been forthcoming.
Dennis Potter has set this play as a group of children played by adult actors. This means the actors have to persuade us not to believe our eyes, which I think is quite a challenge. But they succeeded. Which creates a delicious 'knowing' joke, with all the adults conspiring in an understanding of what their common childhood was about. Those of us old enough to have brought up children (a minority in this audience) could persuade ourselves that we had seen it twice.
And, of course, the well-crafted text was a perfect vehicle to carry the conspiracy. The title comes from one of the poems in A E Housman's "A Shropshire Lad". Apart from the unexpectedly dark ending, the tone was just right, with the most awful pains and insults forgotten in a moment. I particularly enjoyed the Gloucestershire dialect (at least I assume that's what it was, since it's set in the Forest of Dean, where Potter came from). I checked the nomenclature of some forgotten grammar. Have you remembered that saying "I" instead of "me" – "He hit I" – is getting the case wrong. If you do, I guess that makes just you, me, and a few academics, and I had to look it up.
A very enjoyable performance, which evoked for me, as was intended, what the last lines of the poem have as "The happy highways where I went / And cannot come again".
Afterwards, thoughts of childhood misdeeds at the front of my mind, I decided that going to Waterloo East via Southwark Tube station and test my ability con my way past both tube and train staff. Which I did. Of course, they were actually very sympathetic; there was no need to be abnormally childish. But I did discover that this route puts the Union Theatre much closer to Waterloo than London Bridge.
It's a very short play, probably a result of its TV origins, so a quick train to Lewisham and a immediate bus allowed me the luxury of a Thursday pub visit. I don't half impress people when I go into the pub and drink water. Actually, I'm sure they suspect I've caught something.
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