My immediate manor extends from Gospel Oak to Belsize Park, and within its boundaries this morning, at the very last gasp, the veritable fag end, of the year, I bump into the two television travelling Michaels, Palin and Wood, within ninety minutes of each other. Even the most committed adventurers in our midst are taking a short domestic breather.

Michael Palin is spreading good wishes and undiluted bonhomie in the local newsagents. He is nothing but nice, this man; no wonder Maggie Smith had only one way of describing him on the two film sets they shared: “The Saint.”

Michael Wood is walking the dog on Haverstock Hill, not even relishing the success of his wonderful BBC series about travelling through India. “All the acclaim doesn’t find you the next job,” he says, reminding me that he and his wife run their own small documentary film production company.

He is more optimistic about the RSC doing Shakespeare’s “lost” play, Cardenio, which he flagged up in his Shakespeare series a couple of years ago. I dutifully beetled off to Oxford to see a student production of the piece. It was terrible.

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The Shakespeare scholar Carole Chillingham Rutter (Barrie’s former wife) said something that struck a chord after yesterday’s matinee of the glorious new Much Ado at the National: “I find I don’t cry at the tragedies any more. It’s the comedies that make me cry.”

And indeed we had been crying with laughter, and other emotions, throughout this production, mostly at the scene where Simon Russell Beale as Benedick emerges from the plunge pool, eyes peeping over the top, to conclude speculatively that “the world must be peopled,” before swaggering off stage with a new, inappropriate gigolo gait, soaking wet.

How Zoe Wanamaker takes a bath is nearly as funny, too, but the sweetness of her melting acidity is the spring of her performance. Not since Judi Dench and Donald Sinden rescued their love from encroaching middle age in the great John Barton RSC production of thirty years ago has there been such a wonderful pairing of the lovers in the last chance saloon. And as the light fades on Messina, you can see how very much Beatrice and Benedick are going to have to talk about for the rest of their lives.

As my companion to the matinee, producer and translator Anna Karabinska said, “Christmas has now started.” We celebrated my walking over Waterloo Bridge and having supper in Joe Allen’s, undeterred by hordes of office workers in red hats and antlers.

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I have had a few shocks this weekend. A neighbour has run off with a girl half his age and left his wife and four children. My old friend Kevin Henriques, arts sub extraordinaire on the FT, cricket and jazz lover, has been found dead in his flat. I looked at the drinks bill for my son’s thirtieth birthday lunch in Terence Conran’s Orrery restaurant in Marylebone. 

But nothing has been quite so shocking as the news of what the Arts Council plans to do next spring, cutting funds for the Bristol Old Vic, the Northcott in Exeter, the London Bubble, the Yvonne Arnaud in Guildford, and the National Student Drama Festival.

Of course unpopular decisions have to be made from time to time. But the treatment of the theatres in Bristol and Exeter is particularly disgraceful: the Old Vic is the oldest working theatre in Britain and has been brought to its knees by bad management, a bad board, and bad artistic appointments: it is the Arts Council’s duty to rectify this situation, not endorse it.

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[Show as slideshow]

On Thursday night Whatsonstage.com hosted an Outing to Tintin at the London Playhouse. Herge’s Adventures of Tintin have been revived by the joint efforts of Rufus Norris and David Greig and are now playing at the Playhouse until January following a nationwide tour. The show was a great delight and was made even more enjoyable by ice creams for all the children during the interval.

Before the show all Whatsonstage.com theatregoers were given free Tintin posters which they had the opportunity to have signed by the cast during the post show reception which was a real success, with many members of the cast remaining in costume to sign autographs and chat happily with Whatsonstge.com theatregoers. Many of the cast were able to attend, including Matthew Parish (Tintin), Miltos Yerolemou (Snowy), Stephen Finegold (Captain Haddock) and Nina Kwek (Chang) amoung others.

Staff at the Playhouse offered our theatregoers wine, beer and ribena as well as mince pies to get everyone in a festive mood as they mingled with the cast of this charming show. Many of the cast commented on how much they had enjoyed meeting our theatregoers and discussing the show and they all left happily with a copy of our latest December/January issue magazine.

You can add your own comments about the event either here or on the main Discussion Forum. You can also add your verdict on Tintin to our User Reviews for the show –
http://www.whatsonstage.com/index.php?pg=206&action=users&show=l01836265436

I hope to see you all at the next Outing!

- Kate Jackson (Editorial/Sales and Marketing)

It’s funny how one seems to gravitate to specific locales in the city on a sort of Buggins turn basis. I have spent most of the past two days trolling around Trafalgar Square.

And an eventful period it has been: the opening of Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice, better than ever at the Trafalgar Studios; a visit to the Charing Cross police station to report the loss of my mobile phone; a day in the Sainsbury Wing theatre at the National Gallery to see the graduation work of the London Film School; and the opening of Absurd Person Singular at the Garrick.

The London Film School’s chairman is Mike Leigh, who tells me in a programme break that there’s a new musical version of Doctor Zhivago on the way. He’s hoping that the Sinatra-style title number will be “My kind of doc, Zhivago is, my kind of doc, Zhivago is…”

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The only downer over the weekend was that the opening of the Old Vic’s Cinderella on Sunday lunchtime was postponed because of Sandi Toksvig’s chest infection. Until then, it was merriment all the way, starting with the Whatsonstage awards nominations party at the Cafe de Paris on Friday and the two-part Nicholas Nickleby at the Gielgud on Saturday.

Elaine Paige and Michael Ball graced our party with charm and good humour, and other guest announcers, Roger Lloyd Pack and John Gordon Sinclair, opening this week in Dealer’s Choice and Absurd Person Singular respectively, were no less affable, if a bit lower key. When Lloyd Pack and our own Roger Foss went on stage together, I thought the day’s rogering had already gone too far. Imagine if they’d summoned Elena Roger from the floor to join them…

The Cafe de Paris is a great venue for such a shindig, and we had a guest list to match, from Janie Dee to Peter Straker, Caroline O’Connor to baritonal tenor John Rawnsley, Nicolas Kent to Leanne Jones. The place was as densely packed with colourful characters as Nicholas Nickleby itself…

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It is always tricky when a critic alleges an actor can’t act, or that what he or she is doing cannot be defined as good acting. Charles Spencer has had a right old go at Ewan McGregor whose Iago in Othello at the Donmar is both interesting and unconventional and completely devoid of the outward vestiges of evil as embodied by Tim McInerney at the Globe this summer.

However much critics huff and puff, there is no agreement on what constitutes good acting, or indeed bad acting. On Othello himself, some people at the time of Olivier’s performance thought it was dreadful. I thought it was the greatest piece of acting I’d ever seen (and it remains so, still).

Personality, as opposed to celebrity, is often the key in the great roles. And McGregor, it seems to me, has onstage personality in spades and has proved this not only as Iago, but also as Malcolm Scrawdyke and Sky Masterson (though the singing let him down a bit in the second role).
      
Within twelve hours of the curtain coming down on the Othello first night, I was back at Seven Dials for a press call and full dress rehearsal for last night’s tenth anniversary gala performance of Chicago. You want personality? Here was some more.

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It’s that time of year again, suddenly, isn’t it? (Oh no it isn’t)…When every first question is what are you doing for Christmas and every second one is who are you doing it with? (Oh yes it is…)

I see in today’s Daily Telegraph — always a reliable source of hilarious articles — that “gay panto comes out” and that the genre has been enhanced beyond previous generations of presumably “straight panto” by the participation of Mark Ravenhill, Jonathan Harvey, Ian McKellen and Stephen Fry.

Oh yes it hasn’t, and my name’s Christopher Biggins; hurrah for Biggins, incidentally, deservedly crowned Queen of the Jungle on the “I’m a Celebrity” television programme.

Biggins, a practised panto dame, must be dying to get his hands on one of these new gay-friendly pantomime scripts. He’s been bottling himself up for decades now in hetero-happy-time rubbish. As Danny La Rue used to say as he descended the staircase as dame in a swimming costume: “I know what you’re thinking ladies: I wonder where he puts it?”

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Theatres opening on Sundays? Cheap ticket night in the West End? The way ahead for 2008? Or does hope spring eternal?

It’s a time of year for looking forwards. So, entering into the seasonal spirit, let me offer a short wish list of things I’d like to see happen in our theatre in 2008.

1. First nights to start at the advertised time. This may seem a parochial matter but, believe me, it doesn’t help the reception of a big West End show if it starts 20 minutes late. Indeed, for an overnight critic, the glamour of a West End premiere is not all it’s cracked up to be. You struggle through paparazzi snapping at a minor player from Holby City, hunt high and low for the press officer in a crowded foyer, then push through bingeing punters to attain your seat. Having slumped exhausted, you wait a long time for the show to start, especially if it’s a musical. Along with a senior colleague, I actually started a slow handclap on the first night of Hairspray. To avoid such future unpleasantness, I suggest curtains go up on time.

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