Hippodrome hops while Milady goes Gaelic
The Whastonstage nominations party certainly lived up to its reputation as the best gig in town on Friday lunchtime. One or two people have even rung me up to ask did I know how they got home, and with whom.
I retired to Chinatown at a reasonable hour with a couple of good new friends and was amazed at how much everyone seemed to have enjoyed themselves. Our guest presenters Graham Norton, Mel Giedroyc and Michael Ball were all superb, and Leslie Garrett sang her socks off with “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
What I love are the unexpecetd conjunctions of people, such as the opportunity I suddenly had to introduce Des Barrit to Steven Berkoff, or the chance to make sure that the delightful Niki Evans, formerly an X Factor finalist on television, and currently singing Mrs Johnson in Blood Brothers, met her hero, Mr Ball.
Tracie Bennett of La Cage aux Folles told me she read this blog “to find out what I’m up to,” (so do I, actually) while Hannah Waddingham of A Little Night Music rhapsodised over working with Trevor Nunn and the pleasure she took in being photographed with her parents on opening night at the Menier Chocolate Factory.
Hannah’s a really tall girl, while Jemima Rooper is tiny. One stood and held forth, magnificently. The other scurried modestly around in a fetching black and red party frock. The Ivanov company was strongly represented by Kevin McNally, Malcolm Sinclair and Tom Hiddleston, while producers on the prowl included Andre Ptaszynski, Nica Burns, David Babani, Jenny Topper and James Seabright.
The amazing Steppenwolf crowd were out in force, too, and it was great to name check with a quick “hello” Lindsay Duncan and Hilton McRae, Sarah Miles, Paul Moriarty, Gary McDonald, Nick Hern and Jane Maud, Madeleine Lloyd Webber, Josie Walker, Niall Buggy, Linda Marlowe, Polly Stenham, Rupert Goold, Lucinda Morrison, Anna Arthur, Doreen Mantle, Michael Simkins, and George Stiles and Anthony Drewe (at least they didn’t greet me as “Benedict” this time, for which I was duly, and truly, grateful).
I hardly had time to turn myself round to head back into town for a Saturday matinee of The Dreamers of Inishdara in which Patricia Quinn, Milady Stephens, is playing the only leprauchaun in history to have been dressed by Vivienne Westwood, Agnes B and Max Mara.
The play is a Connemara fairy tale in which mythical Ireland takes arms against a sea of modern woes and businessmen represented in the figure of an untrustworthy landlord’s brother played by the playwright Peter Dunne.
This is fairly familiar territory in modern Irish drama, but neither Brian Friel nor Tom Murphy has actually put a fairy wedding on stage, nor do I recall seeing a leprauchaun transformed into Lawrence of Arabia.
Milady manages the switch with a surreal grandeur and a tumultuous invocation of Gaelic magic words. It’s not so much blarney as barmy, but the heart of the play is in the right place and it’s an unexpected little treat in the Jermyn Street basement.
And it’s good to see the mighty Quinn on the stage again, and not at yet another Rocky Horror reunion gig. She keeps her beloved Robert’s flame alive while remaining true to her own wild side. As the Rocky Horror producer Michael White once said to me, “She’s Lady Stephens when she gets up in the mornings, but at ten o’clock at night she turns back into Pat Quinn.”