The Oblique House Production of N F Simpson's "Was He Anyone?" at the Union Theatre, Southwark

I went to the last night of this production on the 29th November.

I just love what is popularly called "fringe" theatre. It offers such a better theatrical experience than the "West End". There is just more love and less business to it. Don't misunderstand me: I'm sure the actors are just as keen as the rest of us to get rich and famous, but, by-and-large, they not only haven't forgotten their roots, they're still at the roots. And the contract between audience and cast is much more intimate: they're not just doing it because that's what they do, they're doing it for us. And they're usually standing right beside us when the're doing it.

In my view, there is no such thing as a "bad" theatrical experience, there is just theatrical experience. Once you're in the theatre, and the lights go down (and sometimes even before that!) the audience is not entitled to deduce intention: it simply cannot tell whether what is going on is deliberate or accidental. This remains true even if the cast says that things are going wrong! The script may require them to say that. Imagine, for example, a fully-formed Tommy Cooper making his debut: should an as-yet-uneducated audience have to be told that this is good humour, rather than bad magic? He even commonly says "no - don't laugh", and "I'll get this right in a minute", and suchlike.

The big moment for me was towards the end, when I realised that NF Simpson had not stood the test of time. (I'm afraid I've mislaid my notes, so this may have some inaccuracies in it. But I still want to say this bit.) We were wandering through the usual surreal absurdity, with some truly delightful moments, when a distinct tone of reality appeared. If I'm not misremembering, Mrs Du-something was extolling the virtues of her funeral service to the candidate widow (I think I've got that bit right!) and I suddenly realised that in any or all of the glass-walled towers between the Union and London Bridge, at that very same moment, at least one corporate "suit" must be doing the same thing about their service (and this is the point!) in more-or-less the same language! Corporate presentations now can have a distinctly NF Simpson tone to them. Isn't that ghastly? Did you realise, all those years ago, that NF Simpson was predicting the future with somewhat greater accuracy than those futurologists we used to hear on "Tomorrow's World"?