On Wednesday evening I headed off to distant WEST LONDON to go to the THEATRE. West London is a flipping WEIRD place as it is full of super-posh people who are ODD. As soon as I got into the lift at Gloucester Road tube I felt out of place, as everyone else seemed to be wearing KNITTED CLOTHES with haircuts from the mid-1980s and more BROACHES than I've seen for several decades. Truly, THE WEALTHY are not like the rest of us!
I was heading for Drayton Arms Theatre to see a play called Triple Threat, written by Mr Andrew Cartmel. A certain subset of people will be thinking "Hang on, not THAT Andrew Cartmel?" to which an entire corpus of me replies "Yes, THAT Andrew Cartmel" i.e. former script editor of Doctor Who back in the Sylvestor McCoy era and current author of the Vinyl Detective series of novels. Andrew was my MENTOR back when I did my MA in Screenwriting at City University, and was both EXCELLENT in his advice and GENEROUS in his marking, so it was lovely to hear from him a week or so ago when he spotted my face in The Radio Times. "Is that you?" he asked, and it WAS!
I bumped into Andrew almost as soon as I got into the PUB bit of The Drayton Arms and we had a delightful chat before it was SHOWTIME. I must admit I was a little trepidatious before going upstairs to see the play, as I always AM when going to see a normal play without even any songs in it, but there was no need as it was BLOODY GRATE. It was actually GRATE three times in a row, as it was THREE short plays in a row, with the same three actors in each. The acting was VERY GOOD INDEED and the writing was BRILLO - I especially enjoyed the middle play, "The Magical Money Tree", which got into some really in-depth arguments about whether money exists or not while still being DEAD FUNNY. The dialogue was especially ace here, it was very very snappy INDEED enabling the actors to bounce off each other, keeping all the THORTS rolling along while still being fun to watch. As I say, it was ACE!
There was a break in between the second and third plays, when a rather wonderful PUB MIRACLE occurred. Being a theatre pub they had prepared for the interval by having only two members of staff on the bar and having both of them working on fulfilling food orders rather than serving customers - for some reason almost ALL theatres and theatre-like places seem to do this sort of thing, as if having a massive queue at the bar is somehow a measure of Artistic Integrity. We all waited about 10 minutes for ANYBODY to get served, and then there was a gradual shuffling about as we watched the now ONE member of bar staff keep having to go and check things with colleagues.
ANYWAY when it was finally my turn to order I realised that I'd possibly got in front of the person next to me. I didn't want to risk the sole member of barstaff wandering off again, so I just offered to buy the other person's drink FOR them. She wasn't sure, but while we discussed it a bloke behind us said "Could you get two pints for me too please?" It seemed like the right thing to do, so I ended up getting a round for all of us but, just I was about to NOBLEY pay for the lot, the chap behind me said "Don't worry, I'll get these. I can put them on the work credit card!"
It was all rather wonderful, like THE UNIVERSE had leant in and said "LO! You shall be repaid for your patience and - for once - not getting all arsey about the situation." I shall have to remember this in future!
In fact, the whole EVENING was rather wonderful, and I hopefully made these feelings clear to The Author as I left. The play, or rather PLAYS, is/are on for two weeks all together, until Saturday 12 October in fact, and I would WHOLEHEARTEDLY recommend buying a ticket or even TICKETS if you are around that area. I cannot guarantee that you too will end up being rewarded with FREE BOOZE, but I CAN guarantee a FAB evening out!
