Do not, under any circs, miss this one!

You see, People, when you live a clean life, er, like me, the Lord smiles upon you, as he did on me today, providing a brilliantly sunny day for a leisurely drive past Midsomer Norton - pheeew, nobody tried to murder me! - and then into the elegant environs of Georgian Bath and finally to the entrance portico of The Bath Priory where a delicious pot of coffee and biscuits awaited.  (Hint for all you proles: if you find yourself anywhere near Bath, you know, like New York or Melbourne, then make the effort to visit The Priory.  Elegant rooms, pretty gardens and superb service.  (There, that should earn me a bit of discount next time I go!)

From there, we took a taxi down to the Italian restaurant right next door to the Theatre Royal.  Having lunched "not wisely but too well", we tottered into the theatre and took our seats in the Royal Circle - well, natch! - in order to see a production of The Play That Goes Wrong, and that is when things started to go wrong, I mean, really and truly wrong!  But of course, it was meant to, and it was hilarious, and just when you thought it cannot get much 'wronger' - it did!  I haven't laughed so much in a theatre since Michael Frayn's side-splitter Noises Off.

As a rank amateur I have often admired the pros doing their stuff on truly difficult, testing and deadly serious plays but watching this lot, as they dis-proved the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics which states, of course, (as you all know) that in a closed system without an injection of work and/or energy, chaos ensues (or something like that).  These brilliant and highly professional actors injected more energy than the sun expels and yet ... and yet ... chaos reigned supreme!

It was superb and very, very funny.  It is on tour now after a year in the West End and if it comes anywhere near you then beg, borrow or steal a ticket!  From now until August it will be playing at:

Newcastle, Coventry, Colchester, Cheltenham, Sheffield, Poole, Salisbury, Glasgow, Milton Keynes, Leicester, Wolverhampton, Cardiff, Cambridge, Aberdeen, Stoke on Trent, Eastbourne, Exeter, Leeds, Llandudno, Salford Keys, Norwich, Birmingham, Dublin, Nottingham, Southampton, Malvern, Plymouth, Canterbury.

 

Comments

[Whitewall]

Gale force winds? Midsomer Norton...you made it by twice! Those photos are stunning! I could live there I do believe as the town would suit me to a tea. Glad the play was to your liking as a good laugh is good for the heart.

[Dom]

I love your theater reviews, the ones you like and the ones you don't like, both. You got me curious about noises off. I found it on YouTube.

[Mayfly]

I LOVED "Noises off"! My mother and I went to see it and cried throughout most of the second act. I didn't actually find the third act as funny, which was probably a relief.

I was always regretful that I missed the Mary Wallace adaptation of Michael Green's "The Art of Coarse acting", a book which made me laugh embarrassingly loud in the middle of places where laughter was perhaps not appropriate, and made people edge away nervously.

[David Duff]

Dom, I didn't know 'Noises Off' was available on YouTube but do give it a view - it is brilliant.

Miss Mayfly, you are absolutely right to bring up the name of Michael Green, 'the original and onlie begetter' of plays that go wrong. I kept thinking of him yesterday. Do you remember the one where the 'family' are sitting at the table and slowly, one by one the legs fall off? They are forced to hold it up with their hands but then the script calls for them to pass the sandwiches or whatever. And then there is the play set in a cell in a German PoW prison in which our frightfully brave British chap is incarcerated. The script calls for him to go up to a wall in the cell which has a barred window set fairly high. He has grasp the bars and shout through to the guard outside. Alas, some dozy ASM (er, no offence intended!) has set the 'wall' the wrong way up and, after a moment's embarrassed hesitation, he has to get down on hands and knees and shout through at ground level!
All great memories.

[Mayfly]

Alas, I remember it from the scripts only, but yes, I think there was desperate signalling with eyebrows a lot of time during the meal, and honestly! As if any ASM would do such a thing! I do recall a frantic scene change during some play or rather which required the use of two braces. As the change required 5 stage hands, none of whom would be the same on any given night and could not therefore be rehearsed properly, I carefully carried the weights on, went to get the stage braces and came back to find that someone had helpfully carried off the weights again....