Critical failure and wedding bells in Pinner
There was a lunch for the critics at the Almeida on Friday but as only two critics turned up — myself and Matt Wolf — it was hard to decide whether to feel privileged or ashamed at being there at all.
The programme information we received is embargoed, for some reason, until tomorrow. Suffice it to say that with Juliet Stevenson, Christopher Hampton, Jez Butterworth, Samuel Adamson and William Shakespeare all in the mix, Michael Attenborough’s rather underrated regime to date will be no less interesting over the next year or so.
Press agent Janine Shalom did a quick ring round to discover that most of the invitees had either forgotten or simply not bothered to turn up, which one can interpret as either bad manners or just laziness. On the other hand, it had been a fairly tough week with the all-dayer at the Old Vic and a Stratford opening, so maybe the poor diddumses had just run out of steam and spare time.
Still, sultry bar manager Hannah Woolhouse laid on a very nice buffet lunch which Matt and I tucked into in the very agreeable company of Attenborough himself, executive director Neil Constable, artistic associate Jenny Worton and Janine.
The theatre operates on an annual turnover of £4m, with a staff of 32 (the RSC has 650), an Arts Council grant of £1m and a sponsorship target each year of £1.2m. Coutts have been principal sponsors for six years, providing a fifth of that amount, and Almeida Projects — the community and learning programme — has been supported by the Lehman Brothers on a three-year deal of £75,000 that may not be affected by their recent collapse.
Seven writers are currently under commission, including Tanya Ronder, Andrew Upton and Richard Bean, with Roy Williams and Doug Lucie already at draft stage on their plays. Attenborough then proudly showed Matt and I round his theatre, which has had a £7.5m refurbishment (£2m of which went on the King’s Cross sojourn during the work).
The shell of the 1837 building contains an astonishing concentration of audience seating (the capacity is 320, many more than the Donmar’s), five undergound dressing rooms, wardrobe and green room, with optional wing space and hydraulic lifts.
Matt marvelled at the detail on the stage properties of Waste, all the letters and notepads exactly in period and written and stamped correctly, while I enjoyed especially the view from the circle, a place where no critic usually penetrates.
We toasted absent friends, and fellow critics, in wine and water, and went our respective ways, though Matt and I converged once more at La Clique in the evening. I think we both felt we now knew more stuff than most of our colleagues.
I went to a wedding in Pinner on Saturday. That may not sound very exciting but we had a ball. One of my wife’s former associates was tying the knot with her long-term partner, and the civil ceremony and after-party was held in a well appointed reception venue on the edge of a rose garden and a distant public park.
Caroline had finally decided which of the five dresses she had bought she was going to wear, while Hugh went against the overriding dark suit trend with a snappy cream summer ensemble complete with blue rose buttonhole and secreted magic tricks. Their four year-old son, Kim, put on a fine floor show — good enough for La Clique, in fact — throughout the exchange of vows and rings.
And, well, wouldn’t you just know it, almost everyone was talking about the theatre. Guests from Durham updated me on the sorry saga of the Gala Theatre, which has never recovered from its opening night featuring West Life and Les Dennis.
The best man from Sheffield happened to know everything that had been going on (or not) at the Crucible as his brother’s involved in insurance work with them. And the groom’s uncle, a wonderful old retired heating engineer, happened to have been at the Old Vic last Monday for The Norman Conquests, sitting about two rows behind me, and had even gone to the after-party at Kevin Spacey’s personal invitation!
It turns out that this uncle is an absolute theatre nut and Old Vic audience stalwart who is trying to convince Kevin that he should have a special anniversary gala in October 2010 to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the re-opening of the Old Vic after saving itself from the extensive bomb damage during the war.
And that’s not all. The uncle’s daughter is married to photographer Ben Rice, nephew of the late Karel Reisz, who reminded me of a commission I’d put his way overy thirty years ago on a magazine I was editing.
I tell you, after all that theatrical chit chat, it was a mighty relief to get back to the real thing at a Sunday matinee of in-i at the National Theatre, and I’ll return to the glories of Juliette Binoche tomorrow.