Out to ‘Dinner’ at the Brockley Jack, 27^th February, 2008

As you may already be aware, I consider the journey to be part of the theatre, and so far I have not been disappointed. But the Jack is a two bus rides from home, and bus passengers (I always generalise from samples of one!) are an altogether more surly lot: nobody did anything.

I think it must be to do with all the CCTV cameras which festoon buses now. Everybody is afraid to do anything. Is there a PhD there: “How CCTV killed free public theatre”?

The only excitement was caused by the buses themselves: the second one came round the bend in front of us about a mile before the change-over stop, and I had the agony of wondering if we would be close enough to run for it. And we were, and we did. So TfL’s forecast of 59 minutes actually came out at 35. And it’s still Lent, so I had nothing to do to fill in the time: roll on Easter.

Finding a seat in the pub had a little bit of action. I sat at an empty table with a couple of half-full pints on it. Didn’t think anything about it. But two smokers came back in and wanted their seats back. So I moved to the other end of the table. And almost immediately someone turned up carrying a pint from the bar and wanted the actual seat I was sitting in. Smoker 1 and smoker 2 then decided to play games by trying to dictate which other empty seats I could sit in, and we all had a good laugh. Including someone at the bar, who caught my eye and, by hand actions behind his considerable bulk, attempted to explain the mental state of man-with-pint.

‘Dinner’ is really good, with lots of jokes, splendidly grotesque characters, and a neat twist at the end. And the cast played it with terrific verve and style. It was ‘in the round’, so in a theatre this size, we were almost at the table with them. Very enjoyable.

One of the things that happens commonly in these small theatres is that if you stop for a drink afterwards, the cast will usually appear for a wind-down. Of course, since they’ve just given their all for us, it would be impolite to bother them, but, just sometimes, we can bump into them at the bar, or the loo, and pass the time of day.

One of the characters in this play is a real hoity-toity bitch, and the actor played it so well we thought she might actually be a, dare I say it, hoity-toity bitch. But she came to the bar beside us, and turned out, to our surprise, to be an Australian. Which, in my book, is as far from hoity-toity as you can get. And she was happy to spend a minute telling us about herself, and was keen to hear our opinions of the performance.

You don’t get that up west!