Frantic On The Fringe
A feeling of fringe in rude health permeated the weekend as I shuttled between the Bush, the Hampstead Theatre and the Old Red Lion. John Simm gives a treasurable performance in Elling at the Bush, and one of his biggest fans – a critic! – was there to see him. Fiona Mountford was not even on duty for the Evening Standard (the redoubtable de Jongh was sharing a front row pew with Blanche Marvin (no relation to Lee or Hank) – “They always save me a place on the front row,” rasped the black beetle-ish queen of the night, coveting de Jongh’s end of row perch but not getting it) – but was there simply because she adores John Simm. From afar, we trust, and certainly along the cathode ray of the hit television series Life on Mars. Myself, I am pleasantly confined on the same row as Dominic Cooper, the brilliant, handsome young actor who is gradually getting over spending three years as Dakin in The History Boys on stage and film. I tell Dominic I prefer the film to the play, mainly because of having Richard Griffiths in close-up, and he expresses surprise: “Most people prefer the play.”
Offstage highlight of the evening is the little black dress worn by Josie Rourke, modestly adorning her own first night as the new Bush artistic director; I thought I was going to miss Mike Bradwell in his gargantuan red jacket and extravagant sombrero, but Josie in her little black dress will do just fine. A real scrum at the Saturday matinee of Kindertransport at Hampstead. The play is nearly as trying as the audience of mostly elderly Jews, who talk over the action, turn up their hearing aids and loops to chime in with the sound effects and arrive in some numbers ten minutes into the first half. Front of house at Hampstead still needs smartening up – why are these late-comers allowed in at all? – and it is a disgrace that there is no free cast sheet, just the overpriced programme texts. Still, the sun is shining.
There is now a pleasant junk and food (though not junk food) market on the spacious patio separating the theatre from the Central School, and outback of the foyer we can sit in the sun during the interval with our beers, ice-creams and overpriced programme texts. Quick car drive to the Old Red Lion for an early evening performance of The London Plays by Ed Hime directed by Kelly Wilkinson. These are well worth catching, a diptych of tales of the city, one picaresque and vicious, very bleak, very Mike Leigh, the other an extraordinary, apocalyptic intersection of two travellers on the underground. Kelly, who was an assistant director on David Grindley’s What the Butler Saw revival, and has lately completed a sterling five years’ work as Hampstead Theatre’s Education Associate, tells me that her new company, Iso Productions Limited, is partly named for the beautifully restored art deco Isokon block of flats (the white stone turns blush pink in the sunlight) where she lives in Belsize Park. Home is where the art is.