Play: Born with Teeth
Tonight, headed to Born with Teeth, an RSC production at Wyndham's Theatre. 'Tis a story of Shakespeare and Marlowe, who in this, are imagined to be forced into working together.. and indeed, there is a theory that they collaborated on the Henry VI plays. The title comes from one of those plays, in fact. I got my ticket with Seatplan again - and booked to eat in Bella Italia again. (They must wonder where I was, yesterday!)
Ah, the Tube strike bit - I took the bus, and it was crammed enough for me to utter an exclamation as I got on. I was planning to get off at the end of the route, and was trying to push myself through the crowd to the stairs in hopes of getting a seat on the upper level, when we came to the next stop - and mercifully a load of people got off, and I got a seat downstairs, quite miraculously.
It was to prove an interesting journey. First, there was a rather, well, fat girl who couldn't seem to put herself anywhere. She was in everyone's way - people had to push past her to get off, she stood on my foot.. when the seat beside me came free, she plonked herself there - half on me. We had just passed through Elephant & Castle when she asked me whether we were yet at Elephant & Castle.. I tried to explain this to her, suggest she should get off right here (we were at the stop on the other side). She stared at me blankly. We were stopped from moving off by a bus in front - I kept urging her to get off. I don't even know whether she heard me - she was buried in her phone. By the time she was back in the room, we were moving - I advised her to get off at the next stop. That message she got.. so then she was asking me should she press the button? We stopped at the lights, she asked me whether she could get off there.. oh Lordy, talk about a fish out of water. She did get off safely at the stop, in the end - I have no idea whether she ever got where she was going. Patently the first bus she ever took in her life..
I had better luck with my next seatmate, whose husband was sat behind us - they were on a short trip from Glasgow, had had a great time - and now he was stressing because they had to get to Heathrow for a 9pm flight, wanted to get the Elizabeth Line from Tottenham Court Road. So we were chatting away merrily, she wasn't half as worried as he was.. and then the journey was taking so long, traffic was so bad, the driver announced he was finishing on Aldwych. I looked up directions for them - and for me: but the traffic was so bad, the driver started letting people off right where we were stopped. So a number of us got off there, and I lost them - hope they found their way ok. I can only imagine the congestion on the Elizabeth Line..
Me, I made my dinner booking in time, imagine! Now, she recognised me, gave me my usual table, my usual drink - why she couldn't just have assumed what I was eating is beyond me: perhaps because I changed a couple of times recently. So it was a while before I ordered - my usual. And wouldn't you know it, it was burnt - the doughballs were burnt, the chicken was burnt, some of the fries were burnt. All edible (except for a few tough fries), but - burnt. Ho hum.. never mind, it was ok. Don't actually have immediate plans to be back here, coincidentally.
Of course, I was only a short walk from the theatre - went straight in, got a drink, took my seat in the rear stalls.
Very modernistic screen for a play set nearly 500 years ago - and I thought the opening, depicting a man screaming, was OTT.
Marlowe and Shakespeare are the only characters, and we see them work on the various parts of the plays together. I had a couple of problems. To be fair, my main problem was with the tittering audience, who kept bursting into laughter for no reason I could see. I laughed on occasion myself - generally when nobody else was. As for the play itself - I loved Marlowe; he is witty, saucy, has an air of danger about him. So why, oh why, does Shakespeare have to be such a stick-in-the-mud? At least for the first part of the play, he's got his nose to the grindstone, seems irritated by his companion's shenanigans. He gets a bit of vim and vigour later on. I suppose they wanted to create a contrast between them - Shakespeare definitely comes off the worse. Very few quotations from the plays - it's mostly banter between them. And throughout, I was rolling my eyes at the audience's adolescent giggles and gasps, whenever anything off-colour was said. 90 minutes straight through, no interval - and as I headed out, someone passing remarked to his companion that he hadn't known that the Elizabethan court was a hotbed of political intrigue (or words to that effect). Ah well, I suppose it's educational, then.. Currently booking till the 1st of November.
I was just perfectly in time to miss my bus - so naturally took myself to the next stop (the one with internet access) to wait for the next bus. Which was much emptier, and where I spoke to no-one.
Comments
Post a Comment