Transports of Delight and Despair
You find jewels, sometimes, in the most unexpected of places. The Unicorn children’s theatre by Tower Bridge has simply the most enchanting and delightful piece of theatre I have seen all year and it’s a puppet show from Holland.
Yes, I’ve seen Robert Lepage’s Lipsynch, and Peter Brook’s Fragments, and David Tennant’s Hamlet, and Les Dennis in Eurobeat. But Onny Huisink’s Pero from the Speeltheater in Edam is an unflawed little gem of design, performance, acting and music, a touching and delightful sixty minutes of commedia dell’arte perfection that sets new standards in children’s theatre.
And I managed to find my way to it without any hiccups. I say this only because getting around town has suddenly become a total nightmare. The other night I had an outing to Richmond that was as awkward and eventful a trip as hitchhiking to the Hebrides.
It reminded me of James Agate’s stern rebuff when asked by his editor at the Sunday Times to review a production in Kew. “Sir, I am this newspaper’s drama critic, not its war correspondent.”
Usually I would take the overground North London line to Richmond, a travel time of half an hour. But the westward bound track between Gospel Oak and Willesden Junction is closed for repair work. I decided to take the Northern Line tube to Waterloo.
The main station concourse at Waterloo was jam-packed. Trains had been delayed and cancelled after a passenger had jumped or fallen on the line at Clapham Common.
I dived down to the Underground again, taking the Jubileee Line to Westminster. Changing to the District and Circle, I was met with the news that there were severe delays due to a signal failure at South Kensington. Eventually we stuttered into Richmond with twenty minutes to spare before curtain time at the Orange Tree for Vaclav Havel’s Leaving.
Leaving could scarcely be more dramatic than Arriving, but so it proved, onstage and off. With Jane Edwardes of Time Out to bolster my resolve, I now took the North London line back to Willesden Junction. There, the replacement bus service should have whisked me off to Gospel Oak.
Easier said than done. At Willesden, Jane disappeared on the Bakerloo Line connection while I went in search of the bus service outside. No sign on these mean streets of bus, transport officials, other passengers, or indeed life generally. The rain beat down, the night closed in, the critic was alone.
Heading up the hill I found a bus station. None of the vehicles was mine. Their lights were out. Across the street, a daunting hostelry, the Willesden Castle, loomed like Gormenghast in the black miasma.
I sat miserably at the bar while a huge Irish woman with a strange smile revealing one or two teeth promised to order me a minicab. Two men lay slumped in the corner over their lagers. By the door, a card school carried on their cheerless banter and threw the odd sexually demeaning comment in the barmaid’s direction. Twenty minutes later, she said the minicab was on its way.
Half an hour later, it arrived. Soon, I was home. But where had I been, and what had I seen? And why had I bothered? Tomorrow is another day, another opening and another show: Welcome to Ramallah, that’s the name of it. How on earth do I get there?