Seasonal Greetings
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.
But I stil crave the authentic pantomime experience — neither the Barbican’s Jack and the Beanstalk nor the Old Vic’s Cinderella has quite hit the spot — so I’m dashing off to the matinee of the Richmond Cinderella before ending my year’s theatre going with the lost Fanny Burney play round the corner at the Orange Tree.
It has been a delightfully social week. I love catching up with the dance critics every now and then and did so at Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker! at Sadler’s Wells. Jann Parry tells me that her Kenneth MacMillan biography is finished and ready to go; Clement Crisp gave me his usual sigh of welcome, as if I’d found my true level in Bourne’s Sweetieland, or BourneVille as I call it (the last time I saw Clement at the Wells, he ordered me from the premises in protest that I should want to see something choreographed by William Forsythe); and Louise Levene observantly remarked, as she pecked me on both cheeks (I was bending down to pick up my handbag at the time, oo-er, missus), that she was inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to men who bothered to shave twice a day.
Which, of course, I do. I also change my shirt for the theatre and try and make sure that my shoes are polished, which rather sets me apart from the rest of the critical tribe.
At the Almeida on Wednesday night, the Press desk laid on mince pies to accompany the free sparkling wine available to all first night customers these days in Islington. People were in mellow mood. So mellow, in fact, that one or two snored and snaffled their way through the performance. God rest ye merry gentlemen indeed!