Since I am in Covent Garden every Thursday for the rest of the year, the journey to the theatre is getting a bit simple. Especially if I go to the Southwark Playhouse, which is becoming more and more common: I just have to stay alert enough not to end up at home wondering why the evening ended so early.
Again, it was dinner at Sainsbury's, although now I have found an indoor spot for eating, which is necessary as the winter approaches. Actually, dinner involved a tiny dietary triumph which I just have to share. My new 'GI' Octoberfast diet allows me to eat nuts, so I bought some dry-roasted peanuts for afters. Dry-roasted peanuts are a favourite of mine: I can consume them by the ton. But this time I managed to save half the (tiny) packet for a full 24 hours. This may seem like small beer to you, but it is worthy of record; even here, where it will "bloom and blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air" (that's Grey, by the way; I was torn between that and Burn's snowflake on the river, "a flash of white, and gone forever", but, although this may be desert air, it has some endurance).
Anyway, the Southwark Playhouse merely involves breaking the normal journey home at London Bridge, and the Octoberfast denies any pub stops, so this was not a very interesting journey. Which reminds me that I intended to write to the railway company and suggest they laid on excitements, like Teatro Vivo provides, for the jaded homeward traveller.
There was, however, an added element to this journey: I hadn't booked a ticket (for the theatre, that is, I'm an 'oldie' on the trains). There were performances on at Southwark Playhouse, the Union Theatre, and the Pacific Playhouse, so I thought I was bound to get into one of them. And it introduced an element of chance into the evening's choice. These theatres are not usually fully booked, anyway, at least not the nights I go. But I seem to have found a way of utilising the Law of Maximised Perversity (sometimes erroneously referred to as 'Sod's Law') to fill theatres, because the Southwark Playhouse was sold out. I was fortunate to get one of the two returns.
Actually, it was nothing to do with Sod's Law. This was sold out because it was so good. (How do you know something's good before you see it? I guess you take other peoples' opinions, and they turn out to be right.) This play, by Fin Kennedy, has apparently won prizes, which doesn't much impress me. I expect if I told you that I awarded it my prize for the last year, that wouldn't impress you either; but I do. The Guardian (actually, somebody who works for the Guardian) wondered "how much other gold dust falls between the gaps of British theatre", so it thinks one of my favourite venues is a 'gap' in British theatre.
It was not only a good play, it was well-staged, and the cast played all their parts with terrific 'attack' (in the violin sense). Rather than being performed in a 'gap', I think this play was perfectly suited to the intimate space of studio theatre. The physical distance between the audience and the players perfectly matched their distance from the subject matter; at times, we could have been eves-dropping in an office, or a pub, or wherever.
And then home, without the stimulus of the station bar; and the ringing pleasure of the play helping me forget the peanuts nestling in my pocket.
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