Wassailing on Bankside
That’s your lot for this Christmas. In a spirit of New Year seriousness I took myself down to Tate Modern this morning to catch the gloomy Louise Bourgeois show (give me Millais at the Tate Britain any day) and was feeling down in the dumps after viewing her roomfuls of plump sexual organs, tedious tapestry sculptures and prosthetic limbs when — oh joy, oh rapture — I turned a corner and ran straight into a procession of medieval mummers in tatterdemalion costumes and bright face make-up.
Two of the company greeted me rather too cheerfully, I thought. They turned out to be a couple of actresses-cum-producers who share office premises with my wife in St Martin’s Lane, Dorothy Lawrence and Rosalind Cressy.
Dot and Ros hardly looked the part of serious theatrical producers — they have the touring rights to Briony Lavery’s disturbing child abuse play, Frozen — in their garish attire, but hell, this was Twelfth Night and soon we’ll go no more a-wassailing.
I’d discovered the Twelfth Night festival mounted annually by the Lions Part company, an outfit run by former RSC actress Sonia Ritter. This explained the swelling congregation around the Globe, where a bloke in tights, striped jerkin and stovepipe hat was banging a drum to welcome ashore another chap covered in holly from head to toe, borne to the bankside in a bobbing rowing boat.
This was the Green Man of mythology and countless London pub signs, harbinger of spring and new life after the long winter nights and the excesses of the holiday period.
Suddenly, the whole area was alive with mayhem and merriment, the very best sort of street theatre. A certain amount of unavoidable mumming was followed by the procession’s departure towards the George Inn at Borough High Street, led by the newly elected King Bean and Queen Pea after the ceremonial eating of the cakes.
I left them to it and went home for lunch, but it had been a pleasant interlude, tainted with the poignant realisation that this was the end of Christmas. No more pantomimes. No more goose. Less red wine. Bring on the stern new dramas.
Actually, there was one hell of a drama played out in darkest Essex on Saturday afternoon, where Southend United beat Dagenham and Redbridge 5-2 in the Third Round of the FA Cup.
Some of my folks live down that way, and I’d arranged a bit of an outing to the game as a seasonal treat. A right bonanza it was too, with the Daggers from the Second Division unlucky to go down to the Shrimpers from the First. For much of the game they were the better side, only to lose their own goalkeeper in a desperate attempt to score an equalising goal when 3-2 down; they had previously led 2-1.
The goalkeeper had ventured forth to the opponents’ penalty area to add attacking weight, but had aimed a desperate head butt at a Southend defender and been issued by the referee with an instant red card.
Southend then scored two more quick and easy goals in the last two minutes. But it was great to sit in a crowd of over six thousand people — twice the capacity of the Coliseum — and rock and roll with the action in a spirit of mid-winter enjoyment; it had been a beautiful crisp and sunny morning by the sea.
Before the match, the Southend chairman took to the pitch to berate his own side for their last home defeat and declare roundly that he expected much more of his manager and his players. He then said that he was investing more money in the club, but couldn’t do it all on his own; he needed the support of the supporters. The chastened fans then gave him a generous round of applause.
Has Bill Kenwright ever done this at Goodison Park, I wonder, home of his team Everton FC? Maybe he’ll do so at his next first night, rallying actors and audiences to greater heights of achievement in the New Year.
On second thoughts, he’d better start back at Goodison; Everton were dumped out of the knock-out competition by lowly Oldham Athletic on Saturday, so that’s another year for Bill to shelve his dream of winning the FA Cup with his beloved Toffeemen.