Friday’s New Year party given by The Stage in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, was not graced by the star of the resident show, Rowan Atkinson. But then Rowan’s been missing one or two performances lately, I understand, because of problems with his voice.

This is slightly unfortunate given that the weekend saw a big advertising campaign launched with Rowan’s grisly features “reviewing the situation” of the rave notices including the gushing tribute by that well known theatre critic Terry Wogan, who counts the production the finest he has ever seen in the West End.

Friends of mine have recently walked up to the box office and bought tickets, no problem (well, the problem last Wednesday night was that Rowan was “off”), yet some ticket agency is sending out email invitations to an expensive all-in hotel,dinner and show “package” – starting from £185 per head – with the statement that there are no more tickets available at the box office.

This offer is for performances at the end of June, so I do hope Rowan has recovered his voice by then. Not that he sings all that well to start with. It always amazes me how certain “star” performers think they can give six or eight performances a week in a big musical without years of training and experience behind them.

Rowan is probably just out of practice. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You can’t play piano in public unless you play your scales and arpeggios every single day of your life. Other current examples of this dereliction of duty may be seen in the performances of Richard Dreyfuss in Complicit and Mathew Horne in Entertaining Mr Sloane. Acting is a vocation, not a sideline.

Atkinson is in some ways (not many, in my view) a brilliant comic performer, but does he have the acting chops for a big West End role in a huge production and theatre? Look at what happened with Martine McCutcheon in My Fair Lady, another lavish Cameron Mackintosh presentation at this same address.

I am still looking forward to hearing the Eurovision song by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Diane Warren, “It’s My Time.” Like everyone else, I was relieved that Jade has received the viewers’ nod as our ambassador to Moscow, but ALW nearly threw a wobbly when he said he wouldn’t go to Moscow if the “wrong” contestant – the cry-baby twins or the Bromley panto prince Mark — won the vote.

It’s bad enough, I suppose, being stuck with Jodie Prenger in Oliver! (although he’s put a fairly brave face on that) without the public getting it wrong twice in a row.

I missed the show and forgot to record it as I had pressing business in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, on Saturday afternoon. I had to attend a football match where my “second” team, the newly formed FC Halifax Town of the Unibond Division One North (the old Halifax Town was sadly disbanded at the end of last season after 97 years mostly spent in the Football League) cruised to a 4-1 victory over their hosts.

Five hundred “Shaymen”  — Town’s home ground is the Shay – swelled the home crowd to a season’s best 570. Half a dozen proud members of the SDS (Shaymen Down South) made a day of it with coffee and pork pies followed by a good lunch session in Harry Boons’ pub where the local Westgate Gold was the pick of several fine ales on offer.

The great thing about small league football is you can move in and out of the ground with ease, find refreshments without risking your neck, and have agreeable conversations with people who are there because they really do enjoy watching football. You can also have a good shout at the ref and be almost certain that he heard you.

And I could have been home in time for Match of the Day. Instead, I went to a dinner party where the other guests, including theatrical fixer and former Oxford Playhouse board member Biddy Hayward and BBC executive Susannah Simons greeted news of my football foray into the wilds of Wakefield with expressions of what I can only describe as astonished indifference. At least I’d brought back a few of Hofman’s unbeatable pork pies to prove that I’d actually gone there.  

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 8:59 am and is filed under Michael Coveney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.