Theatre Next Door
The theatre nearest to my own front door in north London is the Roundhouse (or the Round House, as it used to be known) and I relish the fact that it is now open again. Until recently the nearest would have been the Etcetera, upstairs in the Oxford Arms in Camden Town, a venue I visit far too infrequently. It is a comfortable small theatre — well it was last night when just fifteen of us were watching Hanna Berrigan’s smart, funny revival of Ionesco’s The Bald Prima Donna. The pub is one of the liveliest in the Camden Lock area, a location I think of as the stews of the Middle Ages, Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair or Dante’s seventh circle of hell, depending on my mood and its own level of nastiness.
In the pub, the main attraction (pace Ionesco) was the thrilling play-off semi-final leg between Derby County and Southampton on the big television screen. I ascended to Ionesco with ten minutes of full time to go. I came down one hour later at the end of the penalty shoot-out and heartbreak for the Saints. My new best Irish pub friend, with whom I’d been discussing the interesting personnel connections between Reading AFC and Cork City, said “I bet there was more drama down here than up there,” and I could hardly gainsay him. I always feel slightly guilty, though, about attending a theatre on my own doorstep. It’s too easy. It’s not really “going out,” is it? Which is why I rarely go to the Etcetera. Going to Hammersmith or Richmond is a major expedition for me, and reminds me how much time drama critics spend just getting about the place. They didn’t always, of course. James Agate, the great Sunday Times critic before the last war was once asked by his editor to cover an opening in Kew. “I would remind you, sir,” boomed the florid literato, “that I am this newspaper’s dramatic critic, not its foreign correspondent.”