Theatre lighting is a Cinderella of the technical arts, rarely mentioned by reviewers and taken for granted except when blazingly obvious, so to speak, in which case it’s probably no good.

So it’s been a mini-education in itself to serve as a judge for the first ever “Knight of the Illumination” awards, sponsored by the industry suppliers Clay Paky, and convened in the opera, dance, musical and theatre sections by lighting wizard Rick Fisher and London Variety critic David Benedict.

The winners will be announced at a dinner in June which, if it’s half as enjoyable and instructive as the lunch we had in Orso’s, Covent Garden, on Friday to come to our conclusions, will be a date worth keeping. It’s in my diary, anyway.

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I was taken aback, then intrigued, when asking a colleague  if he was going to see the new King Lear at the Globe, and he replied, “I’d rather eat my own feet.”

Never mind that the show is infinitely superior to the grandiose RSC production of Trevor Nunn with Ian McKellen in the title role (which, don’t get me wrong, wasn’t as bad as Germaine Greer peevishly proclaimed) but it was the combination of “I don’t care about the Globe” (the most successful theatre in London) and the fascinating new phraseology of boredom that got me.

The thing about this new Lear is the involvement of the audience in the story. They hang on every word and twist. They simply can’t believe the eye-gouging of Gloucester. They suck in their breath. They rub their eyes. Some of them may even eat their own feet.

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How depressing is the news that Tony and Cherie Blair have bought the late John Gielgud’s magnificent Grade I-listed South Pavilion in Wotton Underwood, Bucks, as their sixth — count’em– home for a small matter of £4million?

What will the Blairs do there? They will probably host community massage conferences with their health and beauty consultant and inveterate Bill Kenwright first-nighter Carole Caplin, whose chum Peter Foster, a convicted conman, helped buy the Blairs two flats in Bristol as part of their property portfolio.

Gielgud loved his house, and its gardens, and the extravagant rococo interiors that the Blairs will probably overlay with flock wallpaper and cheap curtains. It is a symbolic and deadly appropriation of the nation’s culture, and not half as witty as Julian Clary’s purchase of Noel Coward’s Kentish country retreat, Goldenhurst, which I’m sure he treats beautifully.  

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The new David Mitchell and Robert Webb Channel 4 comedy series Peep Show opened with a grumpy pop at the theatre. Which is somewhat ironic as Webb is about to open in a West End play himself, Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig.

Our two soliloquising Croydon anti-heroes booked a double date at a fringe theatre (exterior shooting suggested the Finborough) where something so terrible was going on that Mitchell exploded, under his breath: “If this were on television nobody would be watching…I can’t believe this costs more than going to a film…” and so on.

Webb’s earlier assurance that it was safe to go as theatre’s moved on …”They use proper actors now; Americans and people off the telly”…suggested the duo were being at least semi-ironic themselves.

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Benedict Nightingale said the other day that the critics had disgraced themselves by giving Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party bad reviews when it opened fifty years ago. No they hadn’t. They just didn’t like it. Harold Hobson liked it but his review was utter nonsense.

Any good or valuable new work is going to be rubbished by the critics, that’s what the critics are for.

In the eyes of most theatre professionals, a critic disgraces himself in print at least three times a week, and Ben is no exception.That’s how life is, and should be. Turning the question round, though, I’d like to know which playwrights, projects and directors Nightingale has championed against the grain of public and critical opinion in order to make a real difference. Can’t think of any.

At a time when the repertoire is narrowing and new plays receive fairly bland and supportive notices however good or bad they are, it was salutary yesterday morning to attend a play reading of a forgotten French boulevard master, Eugene Scribe, best known if at all now for his opera libretti for Verdi and Donizetti.

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Although it is hard to imagine a radical production of The Merry Widow, the heart does rather sink at the ENO’s artistic director John Berry’s reassurance in the programme that “this will be a production of The Merry Widow you will recognise.”

Still, Saturday night’s opening was full of pleasures and I found my eyes filling with tears of joy on at least three occasions, one of them when the orchestra and chorus crept up sensuously on the widow’s song about the unrequited love of a huntsman for a wood spirit, or Vilja.  

This is one of the most glorious melodies ever written and partly explains why Franz Lehar’s operetta went global a century ago, long before Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh started flooding the international market.

My piano teacher always sang Vilja at our annual pupils’ concert, as well as Softly Awakes My Heart from Saint-Saens’ Samson and Delilah, and I used to accompany her, not even knowing what the words were about but unaccountably moved by the music.

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It’s odd how once a bad show opens — like Gone with the Wind — all people seem to want to do is jump up and down on its corpse. The gloating of the gossips is deeply repellent,  much more so than the sad sack of a mediocre show itself. I’ve found myself defending Trevor Nunn’s staging way beyond its virtues just to be cantankerous.

I certainly think Trevor Nunn is a genius whose work is wildly uneven and not even predictable these days. He can console himself with the fact that he should have two much better received productions up and running in London before the end of the year, both of them coincidentally based on Ingmar Bergman movies.

The West End transfer of his Coventry production of Scenes from a Marriage starring his wife Imogen Stubbs and Iain Glen, is well in hand; and his Menier Chocolate Factory revival of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music should be a treat for Christmas.   
 
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The great film critic Philip French, whose columns have been the best reason for buying The Observer for the last thirty years, was honoured with a Life Membership award at BAFTA last night, only the fifty-eighth such award in BAFTA’s history, and the only critical recipient since Dilys Powell. 

Friends and colleagues thronged the reception in Piccadilly — Michael Frayn and Claire Tomalin, Hugh Hudson, Fenella Fielding, Anthony Howard, Gillian Reynolds, Christopher Frayling, John Gross and a multitude of critics both major and minor — and Philip conducted a fascinating one-way two-hour conversation with David Puttnam on the stage. 

The chat was punctuated with a Desert Island Clips of ten key French movies: The Four Feathers, The Servant, Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou, The Quiet Man, High Noon, Singin’ in the Rain, Bad Day at Black Rock, Kind Hearts and Coronets, one of Satyajit Ray’s masterpieces and Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake.

When asked if he had ever wanted to make a film, French replied magnificently: “”I couldn’t make a film as good as one I would want to see,” adding that he’d rather see five films in a week than make one film every five years. 

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Anyone can see that the most appealing and most talented candidates to play Nancy in the upcoming production of Oliver! are both Irish: my money’s on Rachel, but I’m totally smitten by Niamh.

You can see why the BBC television audition show I’d Do Anything is so popular: it plugs straight into the nation’s enthusiasm for musical theatre in a way that musical theatre itself doesn’t, quite.

What do I mean? The people who love I’d Do Anything — despite the bumbling, off-colour remarks of panellist Barry Humphries and the nauseating cuteness of the Oliver boys — are left stone cold by Lord of the Rings and just about make do with Wicked. And they won’t even know about a delightful pocket-size production of The Pajama Game in the Union at Southwark.

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For me, it’s just the theatre down the road, but for most of the seven hundred plus audience in the Roundhouse — formerly the Round House –for yesterday’s ten hour RSC marathon of the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V it was a bit of an outing. Nicholas de Jongh went so far as to buy a pair of cheap blue sunglasses in Sainsbury’s during one of the meal breaks.

He probably needed them later on when producer Thelma Holt passed him a bright pink peppermill after the siege of Harfleur. “Why are you giving me this?” exclaimed Nick, “Is it a dildo?” On stage, the peppermill-do was obviously transformed into Fluellen’s leek, which Jonathan Slinger — is he the best Fluellen ever? — crammed down Pistol’s gullet.

We measure out our theatre-going lives on days like these. I met a man from Aberdeen who had come down to London just to be there, really, and incidentally try and buy tickets. He had gone across the road for lunch because the service was so slow in the venue itself. He had already seen Henry V and thought the French were rather sent up. To which I replied, “Jolly good.” 

Nick Allott, Cameron Mackintosh’s right hand man, breezed by in a pink sweater; not another gift from Thelma, surely.

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