The Rat Trap at Park Theatre

I need few excuses to go to Park Theatre and none to see a Noel Coward play so the only question was when to see The Rat Trap and I settled for a Saturday matinee just to be in Finsbury in daylight.

The show was selling very well and so I experimented with the small balcony area for the first time. It was bit of a risk as while some balconied work well, e.g. Young Vic, others do not, e.g. Orange Tree.

That in mind, I went for Park 200 E30 at £39.

The picture below taken from my seat shows that everything was okay and I would sit up there again.

Being a matinee meant I had to find somewhere to have lunch and my memory served me well and I went back to Frame, which I had discovered in November 24, and helped myself to a good sized and very tasty vegetarian breakfast.

I knew nothing of The Rat Trap and was relying on my general knowledge of Noel Coward, including a recent visit to see Private Lives (again). That worked.

The heart of the story was a recently married couple, both writers, trying to find space for each other and also their work. Under this pressure something broke.

This made it a darker play that others of his but the tension was lightened at times by the small group of people around them.

It was all deeply engrossing and I was shocked when the lights went down for the interval and an hour had somehow passed. Time for an ice cream.

The second half continued nicely towards its dramatic ending.

Everything about the performance neatly done, as it had been for the same company's The Forsyte Saga Parts 1 and 2 in the same theatre in 2024 which also used a great cast and an almost empty stage to tell a compelling story.

This was a superb afternoon at the theatre and even a horrendous journey home, I gave up trying to catch a train at Vauxhall because there weren't any, did nothing to spoil it.

How to Fight Loneliness at Park Theatre

That I have a tag on this blog for Neil Labute (labute) is a good clue that I like his plays. I also have a Google Alert set for "labute london" and it was that which alerted me to the first UK production of How to Fight Loneliness at Park Theatre.

I got in quickly and secured a front row seat (A7) for £29.5.

I made the most of the opportunity of going back to Finsbury to get a few steps and a few new roads in before the show. I caught the Mildmay line to Hampstead Heath and walked from there.

I arrived in good time to eat beforehand which was just as well as two of the places that I had eaten at pre-theatre there before were closed, probably permanently.

Luckily Park Theatre has a bar that does pizzas and while the range is small they do an Artichoke & Olive (£12.45) which did the job. The pint of beer that I his with it was good too. And having pre-booked seats (unlike in their smaller space) I was able to sit in the upstairs bar area enjoying both until summoned to take my seat.

Anything I might have known about the play beforehand was forgotten and I took my seat ready to discover what was going on.

We meet a young couple, Brad and Jodie (thirty-something I would guess), at home fretting about an expected visitor and whether the right food and drinks etc. were available but also whether they themselves were ready for the meeting.

Soon Tate arrives and the situation becomes clear to us.

Jodie has been on several rounds of chemotherapy and now wants to die before she becomes frail and bedridden.

Brad had agreed to this plan reluctantly and wants Jodie to change her mind and live.

Tate has been chosen as a possible means of assisting her death, for a reason that is explained later.

And that is kind of it, the three of them talk about whether the deed should be done, how it could be done and whether Tate is the right person to do it.

Except, of course, that is not it.Neil Labute plays are filled with meaningful dialogue that usually gets dark and twisty, as it does here.

It is hard to describe the play as fun but it is thoroughly fascinating and engaging. It also gives some perspectives on assisted dying that are relevant given the current debate on this in the UK.

Making the dialogue work was a strong cast in which Morgan Watkins excelled as Tate. I loved his restlessness, his constant movement and frequent adjustments to his cap and jacket.

The staging worked well too with the scene shown above acting as both a living room and a beach with just a few prop changes.

How to Fight Loneliness is very much in the established Neil Labute mould so if you like his other work you will like this. I loved it!

The Forsyte Saga at Park Theatre

Like many people my age, The Forsyte Saga burst into my life with the late 60s serialisation on BBC 1 staring, amongst others, Eric Porter, Nyree Dawn Porter and Susan Hampshire. It made a big impression then and that was reinforced with another good adaptation on BBC Radio in 2017. I love the sweep of the drama over generations and the way that the many characters interact.

So when Park Theatre put on a version I was obviously interested.

There was a slight complication in that the saga was told over two separate plays, Part 1: Irene and Part 2: Fleur. It made sense, given the travel time to Finsbury Park, to see them on the same day which meant a Thursday or a Saturday and it was Thursday that won that battle.

The Forsyte Saga was selling very well limiting my options further and I settled for a seat in the Circle and got E12 for both performances. For some reason Part 1 cost £31.5 and Part 2 was £35.55.

First I had to get there and find somewhere for lunch, both of which proved to be very easy; National Rail and Victoria Line did the first part and Frame did the second. Frame was newish to the area and is now my designated pre-theatre restaurant for Park Theatre.

The view of the stage from my seat was good, i.e. I could easily see all of it.

The set at the start was promising too with just four chairs on stage, and that was about as far as it got. The story worked well on radio so there was no reason for it not to work well on a stage with very few props.

Depending on how you look at it (and I wish that I hadn't looked!), the story of the Forsytes is 3, 5 or 11 books, and the famous TV series was 26 episodes so a five hour adaptation had to leave an awful lot uncovered and unsaid. 

It did that by focussing on two characters, Irene and Fleur. These are from two generations with Fleur being Irene's step daughter (from her first husband, Soames', second marriage). That curtailed both the length and breadth of the story but you would only know that if you had heard the full story before, as two plays these were complete in themselves.

That story was a simple(!) one of a rich family with lots of members living the lives expected of them (country houses, operas, etc.) with those lives complicated by relationships.

I do now know if it was a deliberate feature of the adaptation or me completely misreading it but I felt that Soames came out of this quite well while both Irene and Fleur (particularly Fleur) came across as a bit flighty and fickle. Of course there was a major incident (no spoilers) which goes against this narrative but that was not dwelt on greatly and, while not forgiving Soames at all, was over a century ago when things were very different (it only became illegal in 1991).

With a large family and a modestly sized cast many actors played several roles and that worked very well, as it always does with good actors. Only checking the cast list now I realise that I had seen several of them on stage before, e.g. Flora Spencer-Longhurst (Fleur) was in The Real Thing at Rose Theatre and Nigel Hastings (James and Jo) was in  And Then Come the Nightjars  at Theatre503. Also Michael Lumsden (six roles) has been in The Archers for 25 years and it is always nice to catch one of them live.

The strength of the play was in its convoluted story and this was significantly enhanced by the very clever staging, particularly the intricate movement that let the story move from scene to scene smoothly to create a continuous narrative.

It is easy to say that I cannot find fault, not even the littlest, with The Forsyte Saga but it was far more than just faultless, it was excellent theatre and very easy to recommend to any one who likes theatre or stories.

It's Headed Straight Towards Us at Park Theatre

Obviously I am on the Park Theatre mailing list and It's Headed Straight Towards appealed immediately because it was written by Adrian Edmondson and Nigel Planer and had Rufus Hound in the cast. But there are lots of plays that I want to see and I was slow to book.

Then Adrian Edmondson and Nigel Planer were on the BBC Radio4 Today programme talking about it and that was the final nudge that I need to go ahead and book.

Tickets had been selling well and I was very limited in my choice of dates and seats and I was pleased to grab a couple of returns and got 2 standard tickets  in the front row of the Stalls, seats A24 and A25, for a perfectly modest £32.5 each.

I then Tweeted to BBC to say that I was surprised that in the interview they had not mentioned that Edmondson and Planer had worked together fairly recently in Vulcan 7 which I had seen in Richmond Theatre in 2018.

I had planned to eat in the cafe across the road with the enticing photos of Jeremy Corby on the front but I was too late getting there for that option so was pleased Park Theatre was doing pizzas. One of those and a beer eased me into the evening's performance very nicely.

It's Headed Straight Towards Us takes place in a smart film production trailer in Iceland, home to one of the lesser stars in a franchise. 

A visitor to the trailer was an other actor who had been at drama school with the first and whose career had taken a different path. They were appearing in this film as "angry thermanoid". The other visitor was a young female production runner.

It took a while to realise that this was Vulcan 7 in another guise. I am not sure that I would have booked to see it again if I had know but I am glad that I did.

The play was still funny while also being intelligent and with an interesting story.

After the show I was lucky to be able to ask Adrian Edmondson how this differed from Vulcan 7 and he convincing explained that it was a significant rewrite and that the new title was more appropriate.

It's Headed Straight Towards Us was a thoroughly entertaining evening at one of my favourite venues.

Vincent River at Park Theatre was riveting

There was a rush of Philip Ridley plays early last year and then again this. Vincent River was one of three different Philip Ridley plays on across London in just a few weeks. I would have gone to see this wherever it was on and being at Park Theatre, one of my regular haunts, just made things like travel and easting easier.

I eagerly forked out my £14.50 for a seat. I presume that was a preview price as it was ridiculously cheap. It was the first night of the run but that was just a co-incidence and was chosen because it was about the only free evening I had during the run.

I also forked out £12 for Park Theatre's new Pizza and Drink deal to make the food even easier. That sort of worked but as a vegetarian I only had two choices of pizza and one of those would have been cheaper to buy without going for the deal. The London Bohemia Lager was nice.

The main show started at 7:30 and keen to secure a good seat that is when I joined the queue for Vincent River. There was only one person in front of me in the queue and, not unexpectedly, he was another Ridley fan. We both claimed seats in the front row.

We were in a slightly dishevelled living room, not unlike that for Killing Time. In the room was, Anita, Louise Jameson in an aggressive red wig. There was a knock on the door and in came Davey (Thomas Mahy), a young lad who moved nervously and continuously.

For the next hour or so we watched as the couple sparred with each other. There was a reason that Davey was there and Anita knew it. There was also a reason why Anita had moved into a new flat.

As they sparred the emotions grew in intensity and in direction. Davey threatened to walked out at times, was told to go at others and they also shared drinks, drugs and a few kisses. As the emotions waxed and waned it was hard to predict how it would all end though I was not expecting many laughs.

Their conversations also uncovered more about their shared past, and why their pasts were shared, and it was the typical Ridley unravelling of layers to expose the raw truth. That truth hit in a recollection of a bus journey that Davey had taken and that changed the whole narrative.

As the play drew to its conclusion it became more of a monologue as Davey described the pivotal events that had brought the two together. It was powerful stuff.

Vincent River was the most normal Ridley play that I had seen. Yes it had dark secrets that were finally exposed but there was no fantasy in the story and no strange characters to explore. It was a simple dark believable story told the Ridley way and that made it magical.

This was the first night and afterwards Philip Ridley disappeared back stage with his notes which meant that I had no chance to bump into the cast afterwards. I made up for that a few days later when I was back at Park Theatre for another play, A Passage to India, on the press night for Vincent River and was able to have a very quick congratulatory word with Thomas Mahy then. 

Loot at Park Theatre was farcical and intelligent

While I have been an admirer of Park Theatre for some time and was aware of Joe Orton what really got me to see Loot was a chance encounter with Julie at a Sparks concert and Julie comes from Leicester, as did Orton. A convenient date was agreed and I bought the tickets, A18-20 in the middle of the front row, for a reasonable £26.5.

Apart from the promise of a 'dark comedy" I had little idea of what to expect. I had heard a couple of Orton short pieces on the radio recently and while they had some light touches I would be stretching a point if I said that I found them funny.

Loot was funny. Very funny. Laugh out loud funny.

Without giving too much away I can admit that it featured a dead woman, a nurse whose seven husbands all died quickly, a bank robbery and a policeman determined to solve several crimes all related to the few people in the room. Loot was a farce and a bloody good one too.

Trying to hide dead bodies is good farcical fare but there was more to Loot than just being a farce. The dialogue delivered clever funny lines at such a quick rate that it was hard to digest them all. Without the farcical elements of the plot it would still have been a funny play. A favourite, almost picked at random from the many, was when the coffin was being taken from the room the nurse put a copy of the Ten Commandments on it saying of the deceased, "She was a big fan, of some of them".

Some deep themes were covered too. There was a lot of religion, especially Catholicism, some politics and plenty of ethics. It was not a light play despite the heaps of comedy.

I found Loot to be hilarious from unusual beginning to unexpected end.

Killing Time at Park Theatre was slightly dark and very delightful

Killing Time had caught my eye partially because it starred Brigit Forsyth (who I last saw in Now This Is Not The End at the Arcola Theatre in 2015) and partially because it sounded an interesting show with a mix of live cello music, played by Bridgit, and modern technology. Despite this initial interest I was not able to find a free evening to see it until another event was cancelled and I was able to make a late booking.

I used to be able to walk to Park Theatre from work but moving to Teddington meant a journey from south-west to north-east London. Thankfully the main railway line to Vauxhall and then the Victoria Line to Finsbury Park made this journey simple and fairly quick. So much so that I was there by 6:45pm leaving me plenty of time for some quiche, coffee and then a beer before the 7:45pm show.

I took the beer with me into the queue around 7:15 only because it made as much sense to stand there and play with my phone as to sit somewhere else and do so. Despite this keenness some people got into the queue in front of me simply by redefining where the start of it was. Previously theatre staff had defined the start of the queue as where I was standing on the landing between the two floors but this time people were allowed to go down the corridor to the door to the studio. To be fair to the queue jumpers I did not look much like a queue standing there on my own, but it still irked me a little.

Luckily the people who jumped me in the queue did not sit where I wanted to sit and I was able to claim a seat in the middle of the front row in he central section. This time there was seating on two sides of a slightly raised circular stage.

Killing Time opened with Bridgit playing part of Elgar's Cello Concerto which everybody knows from the Jacqueline du Pré version. A good start.

The cellist, Hester, was an elderly woman at home alone dying of cancer and surrounded by crisp packet wrappers and empty bottles of wine as she lived her final days as she wanted to live them. Her only contact with the outside world was a friend who she spoke to on Skype (with her view projected on the back of the stage so that we could see it too) and a social worker who did he shopping and basic household duties.

The play was billed as a "hilarious and irreverent brand new comedy" so I was expecting something light with plenty of laughs. Killing Time was not like that. There was humour but calling it hilarious was something of a stretch. What was there was a dark edge that gave the story, and the characters, real substance. This was a play with depth and a heart which, for me, made it far better than the light relief that I was expecting. A play to recommend as well as to enjoy.

Adding to the emotion was knowing that the play was written by Bridget's daughter, Zoe Mills, who also played the social worker. The conversations that they had on stage about age and death were ones they could have had at home.

Killing Time ended on a heart-warming and satisfying high, despite what had just happened to Hester and her social worker. Their journey there had been amusing, slightly dark and very delightful.

Luv at Park Theatre was fun

Luv had been on my want-to-see list for a while, just because it sounded like fun. It also helped that it won a number of Tony awards and nominations, among them Best Play and Best Author of a Play when it was first produced on Broadway in 1964.

It moved to the want-to-see list to the booked-to-see list only a few hours before I went to see it as I toyed with my schedule for the day, eventually choosing the matinee performance over the evening one.

Park Theatre may be some distance away from home but it was a simple enough journey with a train to Vauxhall and then a tube to Finsbury Park. The only hassle was that the north exit at Finsbury Park was closed leaving me with a 500m walk to the theatre rather than a 100m one.

I arrived just before 3pm for a 3:15pm show and a short queue had already formed, as I had expected. I grabbed a tea and joined the queue some of which dissipated when people realised that they were in the wrong queue as they were there to see the other show in Park200. We did not have long to wait and we were soon allowed to go in.

I was surprised my the layout. On all my previous visits there had been seating on two or three sides of the stage but this time it was laid out traditionally with the stage across one end of the room and then several straight rows of seats.

My good timing got me a seat in the middle of the front row where I faced a bridge and two benches. There a man was contemplating suicide until an unexpected encounter with a school friend from fifteen years earlier.

The two mens lives had gone very differently since school, one had struggled to find any direction and that was why he was not contemplating suicide and the other had become a financial success and he even showed us his silk underpants to prove it. The underpants reveal was a taste of the humour that ran through the play, quirky and unexpected. To give another example from early on that I liked, the successful man said that he was more in love than he was when he got married the only problem was his wife would not let him get a divorce so that he could marry the woman he loved. End of spoliers.

Then the wife joined the two men on the bridge and the triumvirate was complete. And what a strange and complicated triumvirate it proved to be as it morphed into a play about three very different characters each frustrated with aspects of their lives.

As the story developed the witty dialogue continued. It was something like a long episode of Frasier with some distinct, and distinctly odd, characters finding themselves in an unusual situation and trying to get the best for themselves out of it. And like Frasier the humour was solid and steady but more inclined to conjure broad smiles than audible laughs. If you liked Frasier then you would like Luv. I liked Frasier.

The only slight disappointment was they all played their parts with American accents (and rightly so) which meant that it was hard to tell which one was Rex Fairbrother in The Archers. I looked it up afterwards and it was the successful man, not the failure as I had thought as he looked more like Rex.

Luv was an ideal seasonal tonic. Light and fluffy enough to lift the spirits with enough intelligence in there too to keep the brain ticking over.

Lots of laughs with The Roundabout at Park Theatre

My only problem with Park Theatre is that they built it in the wrong place. It lives next to Finsbury Park in north-east London while I live and work in south-west London. Luckily there are plenty of trains to take me into Vauxhall where the Victoria Line can whisk me through London. The journey is about an hour door-to-door, which is fine.

One reason for loving Park Theatre is the front of house facilities and atmosphere. This time I started with an excellent mushroom quiche and salad accompanied by a bottle of decent Chelsea Blonde. I also made use of the free wifi to do a little bit of tweeting. The Park Theatre has everything I need.

The Roundabout was almost a speculative choice of plays to see. My main reason for seeing it was simply because I had not been to Park Theatre for a while and this looked like a good enough reason to go, It was written by Northern Legend J.B. Priestley which helped despite me not being a major fan of his, I saw this as a chance to learn more about him and perhaps to change my mind. The final reason for seeing it was that the cast included Benidorm Legend Hugh Sachs who I had last seen on stage in Anything Goes at the New Wimbledon Theatre.

The decision made, I helped myself to seat A3 for a derisory £20 plus my usual small donation.

The story was set in the familiar territory of a reception room in a large country house. Here we met the master of the house and struggling financier, Lord Kettlewell, and his idle friend of many years Churton (Chuffy) Saunders. There were, of course, a butler and a maid on hand and also there was a young artist composing designs for the dining room. Expected to add to this group was the Lord's colleague who was on his way, at the weekend, to try and help with the financial problems.

And that was just the beginning, four other people also arrived all either unexpectedly or at short notice and each brought further confusion to the household and more comedy to the situation. This was especially true of Lord Kettlewell's daughter, Pamela (pictured above), who was played admirably by Bessie Carter in her first professional role. Pamela soon had everybody else playing to her tune and steered the story towards its satisfying conclusion.

With a cast of eleven there were plenty of character types and their interactions for Priestly to play with and he did so adroitly producing a steady stream of smiles, giggles and laughs. The woman directly opposite he had a very broad grin on her face all the way through and I suspect that I did too.

The Roundabout was never going to challenge the intellect, and nor was it trying to. What it did do was entertain mightily with a story that skipped and jumped in different directions, a cast of interesting characters all played with conviction and panache, and some crisp dialogue to mesh everything together. It was delightful.
SaveSave

Some Girl(s) at Park Theatre was thoughtful, classy and surprising

I was always going to be keen to see Some Girl(s) because it is by Neil LaBute and even more so because it was on at the Park Theatre which is one of my very favourites. As always the problem was finding the time and I used a comics signing which had brought me into London on a Saturday as an opportunity to see a matinee performance.

The signing finished later than I hoped and there was a mandatory detour through Liberty to check the end of sale offers (no more shirts for me sadly) and so I did not get to the theatre until 2:45pm for a show that started at 3:15 and without a ticket. Luckily I was able to get one and it must have been one of the last as the theatre was happily packed.

I also helped myself to a coffee, a humus and avocado roll and a beer before joining the queue for Park90 early enough to get a seat in the front row.

The set was a hotel room in Seattle, the first of four that we would see. In this room was a thirty-something man, Guy, waiting for a visitor. This was Sam, a woman the same age.

We soon learned that they had been a couple at High School but he had left her. He had come back after fifteen years to make amends for his past.

Of course it was not as simple as that and in their crisp dialogue we learned that she had gone on to have the sort of life, married to a local guy in a steady average job, that he was scared of and had run away from (his excuse).

As their conversation continued we found out more about both of them and things got more complicated as we did so. Typical LaBute.

Next we moved to Chicago. It took a while to model the new hotel room and we watched an aerial flypast of Chicago as we did so. It was good to see the Mies van der Rohe tower that I visited when working at IBM in the 90s.

Joining Guy in this room was Tyler. They had had a very physical relationship back in the day and she was still living that lifestyle with no regrets, just the opposite in fact. After the why are you here? part of the conversation was out of the way Tyler seemed keen to carry on where they had left off, despite being told by Guy that he was engaged. That scene was left ambiguously as the lights dropped for the end of the first half and I went out for another beer.

We came back to Boston and to Lindsay. She was an older (only slightly) married woman who Guy had an affair with when they were both teaching at Harvard. They had been discovered after two terms (semesters) and Guy had fled leaving Lindsay to suffer the consequences. This time the tables were slightly turned and when Lindsa met Guy her husband, who had stayed with her, knew all about it.

Finally, Los Angeles and Bobbi, the girl who not so much got away as was abandoned by mistake. Perhaps Guy's attraction to her twin sister had something to do with it. More crisp dialogue, more revelations.

Then, in a minor altercation, a plant pot fell and the plot twisted sharply and unexpectedly. I was expecting a twist but had not seen that one coming. This was followed by more explanations, more regrets and another surprise.

The four acts fizzed past and somehow it was quickly 5:30pm. The intervening time was consumed by the dialogue which demanded close attention and repaid that investment many times over with it's fluidity, honesty and the little barbs that revealed more about the players and their pasts. These were people that I cared about and I wanted to hear their stories.

My interest in the people was heighted by the action and, unusually, I want to mention all of them; Elly Condron, Roxanne Pallett, Carolyn Backhouse, Carley Stenson and Charles Dorfman. I was particularly pleased to see Carolyn Backhouse again having seen her several times at the Orange Tree.

Some Girl(s) was an intelligent and rewarding play delivered skilfully. Great theatre in a great venue made for a great afternoon.

Beacons at Park Theatre was a very human play that touched several emotions deeply

For the second week in a row I found myself at the Park Theatre for a Thursday matinee performance as the time and location fitted in well with what was going on elsewhere at the time and the shows there have always been good or better.

Another attraction was that one of the three actors was Paul Kemp who I had seen several times at the Orange Tree.

I was also interested in seeing another play about Beachy Head having seen and enjoyed a play of the same name some years previously.

As in the previous week I booked online just before setting off to the theatre and my unreserved seat cost me a friendly £18 for a show scheduled to run for an unbroken 1 hour 25 minutes.

I walked to the Park Theatre from Kings Place, as usual, taking an indirect route as my mood fancied, as usual, arriving in decent time for a coffee prior to going into the theatre. We were in the smaller space, Park90, and I joined the queue that was starting to form on the first floor. By the time that we were let in the queue stretched along the first floor corridor and down the stairs to the ground floor. Once again I found that older people, and I must include myself in that, like to queue to get the best seats whereas younger people are more content to leave everything to the final moment.

The stage was set as a cliff-top with a ledge in one corner. We were advised by the helpful staff to sit near that corner and so I did. I was in early enough to get a seat right in the front row and I chose my place just off the corner. The picture below shows the set and the excellent view that I had of it.

Beacons introduced us to three characters who were all,in some way
connected to Beachy Head and, through that, to each other. A middle-aged woman (Julie) sold ice creams but was losing out to a posher rival nearby. A middle-aged man (Bernard) came there for somewhere to be and to see the middle-aged woman. A young woman (Skye) was drawn to the place where somebody she knew had killed themselves.

They passed the time by talking to each other and through this we gradually learned more about them and they learned more about each other revealing more and deeper connections between them. The story developed through these revealed connections and there were a couple of surprises along the way.

On the way there were three rich and essentially decent characters trying to get along with each other and it was a real pleasure to watch them do so. The three actors were all excellent. I had gone to see Paul Kemp (Bernard) and I loved him as a somewhat shy and bumbling ex-alcoholic. Emily Burnett (Skye) moved convincingly between bubbly young woman and somebody with sad memories to content with. Tessa Peake-Jones (Julie) was the rock that they both relied on but with needs of her own. I cared about all three of them.

I must confess at this point that I spent ages looking at Tessa Peake-Jones trying to work out what play I had seen her in because she looked familiar only for Google to remind me afterwards that she had been Raquel in Only Fools and Horses for many years!

Beacons was a very human play with (basically) a happy ending though there never are endings in real life and there were several less happy parts along the way. It left me in a positive mood which has to be a good thing.

The afternoon ended well when I managed to grab a few words with Paul Kemp afterwards to tell him how much I enjoyed his performance in this and the other plays that I had seen him in.

Lady Anna: All At Sea at the Park Theatre did Anthony Trollope proud

The Park Theatre at Finsbury Park has quickly established itself as one of my favourite theatres simply because it has so much going for it. The plays are obviously the most important thing with the performance spaces a close second but the front of house area matters too and so do the transport links. The Park Theatre excels with two stages seating 200 and 90 people respectively, two bar areas serving a good range of food and drinks, and it sits almost on top of Finsbury Park station with a bus station next to it.

Being one of my favourite theatres mean that I pay more attention to their listings which, in turn, means that I am more likely to go there. And so it was that I learned about Lady Anna: All At Sea and as it was an adaptation of Anthony Trollope's book Lady Anna I was quick to make a booking. I had been through a Trollope period and had read all of the Barchester stories and had a good idea of what to expect despite not having read Lady Anna itself.

I booked the theatre for a day that I would have been in London. That worked reasonably well though the Met Office got the forecast wrong and my 4km walk in light cloud meant that I got drenched in a very heavy shower. I had an umbrella and that protected my head but my suit and shoes took some serious damage. Luckily I cared for neither very much. Also the rain stopped after a while and continuing the walk was the best way to dry off.

I got to the theatre around 6:30pm which gave me plenty of time to eat and drink before the show. And to dry off some more. I started with a warming coffee and followed it with a spinach quiche and salad. I like their quiches and salads. Warmed and fuelled I got a Meantime Pale Ale to take in to the first half with me.

I had had some luck with the book as for some reason there were eight seats available in the middle of the front row when seats to the sides and behind them had been taken. I spent my £25 on seat A21. The stage was "U" shaped with a wide bottom and short sides and I was just right of centre.

The stage was raised with little legroom but plenty enough for me. The stage was bare apart from the books spread across it. It stayed that way and the books became seats and stepping stones, as required.

Lady Anna: All At Sea told two stories concurrently, the story of Lady Anna as written by Trollope and the story of Trollope writing the book while travelling to Australia on the steamship SS Great Britain, hence the All At Sea qualification.

The story of Lady Anna was a fairly simple one, as was usual with Trollope. An Earl had died and while it was clear who the title should go to the future of his fortune was less certain with two possible wives laying claim and whichever one won that would still leave the new Earl penniless. A marriage was proposed between the new Earl and the daughter of one of the claimants to reunite title and money but she loved a lowly man, a tailor, who would be significantly below her socially if her mother won her case.

From there Anna's story provided the backbone off which hung the characters and social observations that made it a Trollope story.

On the boat, Trollope set about his task in his usual way, writing nine pages each morning before breakfast. His wife the reviewed and corrected his writing. This style has been criticised for being more like an industrial process than an artistic endeavour but the proof is in the pudding and he wrote some very popular books.

Life on the boat also enabled us to understand the social observations that Trollope was making through the eyes of that time. For example, it was inconceivable to Trollope's fellow passengers that Anna, once a Lady, could possibly marry a tailor.

Trollope's story was told in the same style as Trollope told Anna's and the two stories meshed neatly. Helping them to mesh was the small cast that each played several roles. Princess pretty Antonia Kinlay understandably caught my eye the most as Anna in the story and Trollope's maid on the boat. It came as something of a shock to see her in the cafe afterwards to realise that I had been sitting next to her when having my coffee before the show. The other cast were excellent too as they brought the horde of characters to light.

The third story, which encompassed the other two, compared the social structures of England and Australia.

Lady Anna: All At Sea grabbed my attention from the start and held it effortlessly for two hours with stories of relentless charm and interest. It was a luscious experience that left me smiling broadly for a long time.

The Dead Monkey at Park Theatre was a story of love/hate and humour/tragedy laced with a touch of the surreal

I had been interested in going to see The Dead Monkey since it was first announced but other things in my life, like work and life, had conspired to keep me away. I came up with a brilliant to see it at a Thursday matinee and then see another play also in its last week in the evening. Sadly the brilliant plan failed when the matinee performance sold out.

That left me having to make a last minute decision on the Thursday afternoon which of the two plays to see. The Dead Monkey sounded more fun and I like the bar, food, wifi combination at the Park Theatre so it got the nod. It was a good nod.

The theatre is about 4km from the office and that was a good excuse for a nice walk. I varied the route from previous times. I knew the general direction and headed that way taking care to try new roads when I could. There were no startling discoveries along the way but a change is as good as a rest and it was a fine walk, despite the heat.

On arrival I helped myself to a latte and an asparagus and almond flan with salad. I also helped myself to their wifi and spent my time usefully updating the Kingston Society websites. Finally I helped myself to a beer to take into the theatre with me. It was still warm.

The Dead Monkey opened with a dead monkey, it was that lump under the blanket at the front of the stage.

It was owned by a couple who lived on the California coast and who had been married for fifteen years. He was away working as a salesman and she was distraught with grief at the monkey's death and also concerned about how her husband would take it on his return.

The vet helpfully suggested ways that the monkey could be disposed of. These included an expensive burial plot at the zoo, with an optional headstone, or the cheapest option of eating it.

And that very much set the scene for the rest of the play, a relationship that had love but not much trust, events that ranged from the funny to the tragic, and a heavy dollop of the surreal.

This ebb and flow of events and moods was redolent of the sea but that might have been heavily influenced by the play being set there and by the author, Nick Darke, having a close association with North Cornwall coast. It may have been an unintentional metaphor but I found it a useful one. The other thing about the sea is that it does not stop and the play did not stop either, it came to an end but was still in motion.

And it was this movement that was the point of the play. Each event had it's own importance but what was more important was what happened before and what happened next. These events were suffused with life, death, sex and water.

Riding the waves, literally and metaphorically, were the married couple Dolores (Ruth Gibson) and Hank (James Lance). He was big, brusque, loud and hairy while she was petite and something of a dumb blond. They were an unlikely couple brought together and united by the monkey. The only other character was the vet, Charles Reston, who was a deadpan foil to the emotional couple and also the source for most of the surreal elements. All three actors were good and were very warmly applauded at the end.

The Dead Monkey was an entertaining romp through emotional peaks and troughs which seemed not that big to us as we were all sitting on the same raft as it navigated the troubled seas. This flattened the experience a little and deprived it of shock value despite the shocking things that happened. Did I mention the bestiality? 

Frozen at Park Theatre was excellent voyeuristic horror in the style of Silence of the Lambs

Something about Frozen appealed to me but I had to work hard to get there. Or rather, I had to skip work to get there.

I was in our Kings Cross office only to discover that all telecommunications were out (it was the Holborn underground fire) so there was no point me being there. And I had theatre booked that evening so I did not want to go all the way back home just to do a couple of hours work before turning around and coming back again.

The solution was simple and brilliant. A quick phone call to the Park Theatre confirmed that they had good wi-fi and that there were seats available for that afternoon's performance. So off I set, walking (of course) the 4.2km to boost my daily step count.

I got there well before the lunchtime rush and while there were a few people in, mostly working, I was able to find a good spot near to a power supply and set to work with my first latte of the session.

I had a welcome distraction about an hour later when I got an email from somebody at the Park Theatre asking about Gift Aid on a recent donation. I replied and pointed out that I was actually in the theatre and a few moments later I was talking to Dorcas Morgan, the Development Director there. I was pleased to be able to tell her personally that I love the set-up there.

I had about four hours to fill before the show and that meant more lattes, a quiche for lunch and some work. Actually the work went as well as it would have done had I been in the working office.

At 3pm I moved into their smaller studio. Park90, for Frozen. It was not sold out but I still did well to get a front-row seat.

I knew Frozen was about an abducted child but I had no idea of how it would be approached.

There were three narratives, the mother's, the killer's and a psychologist's. Their stories were told to us directly except for when they coincided and then we watched their conversations. It's a style I had seen used several times recently and I think that it works well, it is certainly better than inventing an artificial reason for one character to reveal his/her thoughts by talking to somebody else.

An obvious reference point for this was Silence of the Lambs, and there were further echoes in the language, and I offer that comparison to show how good Frozen was rather than to suggest any derivation.

All of the stories were dark, though some were darker than others. The mother revisited her decision to send one of her daughters (and which one she chose) on an errand, the psychologist had her own skeletons relating to a colleague who had just died and, not surprisingly, the serial killer's life was almost relentlessly dark from being abused as a child through to his killing spree.

The stories were told through a series of generally short scenes which kept the pace going and switching between the characters helped to vary the mood. When done correctly, i.e. it is not over-contrived, then that approach keeps you engaged in the story and immerses you in the story. It was done correctly here.

One slight reason for going was to see the psychologist, Helen Schlesinger, whom I had seen play the Queen at the Rose Theatre, and while she and the mother both played their parts well it was Mark Rose as the unrepentant and calm killer who dominated proceedings. I tweeted something at half-time about him playing the part a little too well for my liking! His was the main story of the three, and rightly so.

Because of the subject matter it was never going to be an unhappy or uplifting play and I was more than happy to settle for tense, dark and gripping instead. Frozen was brilliant.

I hung around for one final latte after the show and, as hoped, managed to grab a quick word with Mark. I remarked on his heavily scrubbed look and he said that he liked to leave his character firmly behind in the theatre and to emerge as himself. I could see why you would do that.

In one way you could say that there was nothing special about Frozen but that would be to miss the point that so many parts of it were very good that, working together, produced an exceptionally good drama. I am not convinced, though, that a Thursday afternoon was the most sensible time to enter that world!

Kill me Now at the Park Theatre was tender in a shocking way

Everything about this evening was a delight.

I think that I have Facebook to thank to alerting me to a performance of Muswell Hill at the Park Theatre (I had seen the play before and Facebook knew that) and that got me looking at the Park Theatre's website, that was a new theatre for me.

A quick look suggested that the theatre was well worth a try-out visit and this would be easy to do as it was located very close to Finsbury Park station on the useful Victoria Line. I was struggling to find enough free evenings to do everything so rather than see Muswell Hill again I chose to see Kill Me Now which had the intelligence to describe itself as a "black comedy" which is right in my sweet-spot. It also helped that the cast included Oliver Gomm who I had seen twice previously (Orange Tree and Rose), playing a foppish toff both times.

I booked online at short notice but there was just me going and I was able to bag the one free seat in the front row, A51, for a very reasonable £25. Why pay west-end prices?

I had cleverly arranged to work in London, Kings Cross, that day and, as I had plenty of time and the weather was fine, I avoided the convenience of the tube and walked there. It took me though an hour of time and through places that I did not know well and some I did not know at all. That's why I like walking.

I had made no plans for food and was relying on being able to find something in or near the theatre.

I was delighted to find that the Park Theatre and two cafe and bar areas, on the ground and first floors, and they had a good selection of vegetarian quiches to choose from. I went for the spinach and was further impressed when the accompanying salad included pomegranate. I had a coffee to go with it.

My first impressions of the theatre were very good. I liked the open friendly spaces that included additional seating areas outside of the cafes. I liked the choice of food and drink. I liked the atmosphere and was grateful that I had chosen to go early and so was able to get a seat without too much difficulty. I gave it up later, after I had eaten, to somebody who needed it more than me.

There were two performance spaces at the Park Theatre, called simply Park200 and Park90 to denote their capacities. I was in Park200. From the website it looked much like the Orange Tree with a couple of rows of seating around the stage downstairs and a small balcony above.

Apparently it was normally set with seating on three sides but for this production it was on all four and I had one of the additional seats at the back of the stage. That confused me at first as the two doors into the theatre said what seat numbers they were for, e.g. 1 to 20 and 21 to 40, and my seat, 51, was not included. Having failed to find a third door with my number on it I gave in and asked a member of staff who explained how the problem arose and pointed me to my seat.

The play started with the father helping his disabled teenage son to take a bath and the male nudity set part of the tone for the evening.

Father and son lived alone together, the wife/mother had died, and they got a lot of help from the loving sister/aunt who was a lot younger than her brother. It was a troubled family, because of the boy's condition and the history that caused it and his mother's death, but it was loving and they coped.

The emphasis on the first part of the play was the boy and his passing through adolescence. They key changes where a friendship he developed with another boy at his school and the tablet that his aunt gave him which opened up new worlds to him, including porn.

The new relationship and technology, and his growing maturity, made the boy more able to cope and more keen for independence. He and his friend even discussed living in their own flat together in a scenario that reminded me of Elling.

Then the focus gradually changed from son to father. With the son more able to cope the father was able to think about himself more and he started a relationship. He tried to keep this secret but nobody was fooled by the regular gym sessions.

Then he was struck by a serious debilitating incurable illness and he gradually became the patient while his son, still with his friend and his aunt, became one of the carers.

All this led to why the play was called Kill Me Now.

But the ending, and the strong moral questions that posed, was just one of the great things about the play. While it ended with considerations of death it was a story filled with love and tenderness as a family and their close friends got what they could from the life they had.

There was a lot of humour too, the sort of humour that comes from the way that people naturally behave. There were no tricks, gimmicks or cheap laughs.

There were some very personal moments too including one that had the middle-aged women sitting opposite me cringing in embarrassment. Without giving too much away it was about helping the boy do what boys like to do but which he was prevented from doing by his disability. This scene also got a good laugh from the line, "She does anal." And that was typical of the whole play which combined humour and pathos to explore very human situations.

The human element worked well because all of the cast were excellent.

Kill Me Now was an exceptionally rich and rewarding play that I loved from start to finish even though it drained emotion from me like a parasitic leech.

I hung around the bar afterwards like a seasoned groupie and I got the brief talk with Oliver Gomm that I was hoping for. I like to give creatives personal feedback and they always seem to like receiving it.

Park Theatre had impressed me mightily in all aspects and I added it to my list of special theatres to keep a close eye on with the firm intention of seeing my next play there soon.