Going to the theatre is a social activity and I always think it’s dismal of the critics to turn up without a guest.

Jack Tinker always used to take a guest, plonk him or her (usually him) in the bar at curtain down, despatch the review, then adjourn for dinner. That’s the way to do it. “Is anyone sitting on that seat?” Alan Brien was once asked. “Yes, my raincoat,” he said.

So I felt a bit sheepish being tout seul at Shadowlands last night, especially as I know that if I’d made the effort and asked around, plenty of friends or neighbours would have jumped at the offer of a free ticket. Still, it wasn’t all solo meditation. I happened to find myself sitting next to the author, William Nicholson, who was charm personified.

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Second best misprint of the year in today’s Guardian in the birthdays list: “Blake Morrison, poet and litery editor, 57.” Nearly as good as the assertion, when Sian Phillips joined a “litery” awards panel, that she was “no stranger to boos” instead of books.

Nothing but books (of the thrown variety) for ENO’s new Carmen, nothing but cheers (mostly)– and lots of chairs, far too many — for Masque of the Red Death at BAC. I’m with the minority on both.

Mind you, I only lasted two hours at the Masque. I got fed up with being aggressively hassled for not wearing my ugly white mask properly (you can’t, comfortably, with specs) but I was fed up anyway with traipsing round the same prissily furnished and over-decorated rooms and nothing happening. It’s like being stuck in the Geffrye Museum for a fortnight with a bunch of bad actors as live-in set dressing.

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I did a lot of touring and talking yesterday, first at the National Theatre’s slowly emerging new studio on the Cut, next to the Old Vic, and secondly at the ICA whose portals I have not crossed in many a blue moon.

The ICA hosted a panel discussion, with audience participation, convened by the academic and Beckett specialist Ronan McDonald, whose new book The Death of the Critic is published at the end of the month. I hope we get to hear about it because the title rather implies that there may be no-one around to review it.

Ronan proves a jovial cove who wants to know if the internet bloggers are going to render the professional reviewers superfluous to requirements. I tend to think that they won’t, but I enjoy blogs and bloggers if only because my view is reinforced that there is a big difference between the democratic airing of opinion and the job of a critic.

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WOS Outing to Glengarry Glen Ross - Thurs 4 October 07

 Our outing to see James Macdonald’s new revival of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross at The Apollo Theatre was a sell out outing. Starring West End legend Jonathan Pryce and TV star Aidan Gillan, the trip was sell out and all were in high antcipation to see this production. At only 90 minutes long including an interval it was thankful we had a Q&A to make the evening last just that little bit longer!

The Q&A had a wonderful turn out with all cast members, except Jonathan Pryce, coming out alongside the director, James Macdonald. Terri was onhand to ask the initial questions and afterwards the floor was open to you guys - with many of you asking some really insightful questions!

 Please do add your comments and look at the pics of this event!

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 Hope to see you all very soon at another exclusive WOS Outing!

 Until then…

News reaches me that Nicholas de Jongh’s long-simmering play about John Gielgud being caught with his trousers down in the famous cottaging case of 1953 is soon to reach the stage, probably at the Finborough Arms in Earls Court. Critics who write plays do so at their peril, of course. But de Jongh has long laboured quietly behind the scenes trying to get this play on, as has my old friend, and his contemporary, Peter Ansorge, with his drama about the philosopher/critics Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger.

Ansorge, too, sees some light at the end of the tunnel with interest in his play emanating from Alan Rickman. Some critics started as playwrights – Jeremy Kingston, Garry O’Connor and Frank Marcus spring to mind.

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The weather forecast has proved wrong and on a glorious day I took a train to Dun Laoghaire and walked the coastal route to Joyce’s Martello Tower and on to Finnegan’s in Dalkey for lunch.

I had plenty to think about after a packed Dublin Festival Sunday: the return of Stephen Rea, a witty evocation of pop art, shaven-headed Bhuto dancers and those pesky aerialists from Oz, walking and running at 90 degrees to the flat projection of a video game projected on a huge screen in the George Docks.

Rea was part of a reading of Stewart Parker’s 1975 play Spokesong, set in a Belfast bicycle shop as the violence escalate outside.

What a wonderful actor Rea is, and what a wonderful play, renewed as a green pamphlet, almost, with Gilbertian songs, history and humour thrown in.

Someone’s bombed a pet shop. How could they do such a thing? Yes, but for one magic moment, it was literally raining cats and dogs.

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Turning films into stage plays is hardly worthwhile when the big screen does it so much better.

What have Les Enfants du Paradis, The Ladykillers, A Matter of Life and Death and All About My Mother got in common? Easy. All are movies that have been adapted for the stage. The process is gathering momentum. This autumn we are promised Swimming with Sharks and the musical of Desperately Seeking Susan. Even now, director Emma Rice is probably eyeing up the possibility of turning Citizen Kane into a Kneehigh spectacular.

Does it matter? Some argue that theatre should seek material where it can and that there is a constant, two-way media traffic. Plays have long been turned into films. So why not the other way round? I remain sceptical. The case for making movies out of plays is largely pragmatic. Film is a vast industry that can only be sustained by raiding other media. A filmed play also has one distinct asset: it makes the work available to more people.

All the purist arguments about whether or not to film Shakespeare were for me knocked into a cocked hat by an experience I once had in America. I was on a panel with Kenneth Branagh shortly after his film version of Henry V had opened in the States. Branagh was mobbed by young people who were simply grateful for the rare chance to see and hear some Shakespeare. But the argument works the other way when you make plays out of films. Why go to all the trouble of seeing a staged movie when you can nip down to the local DVD clubvideo-store and rent the original for three quid?

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