I made a deliberate decision to cut right back on doing gigs between now and the start of
the Christ on a Bike tour and am delighted I did so, as for the first time in ages I have plenty of nights free to do stuff, see friends or just veg in front of the telly. Tonight I went to see some theatre, and though I had been a bit tired and had been dragging my heels beforehand I was very glad I made the effort.
The event was called
Theatre Souk and was at the Theatre Delicatessen which is a three or four storey building in a back road near to Selfridges in central London. Each of the rooms of this building had been turned into a theatre space where installations and short plays were being staged at various points through the evening. My girlfriend had directed one of the scenes for a piece inspired by Chekov's The Seagull, which was performed in a mock up of a casino, the scene chosen by the spin of the roulette wheel. I don't know anything about The Seagull, so that one didn't make that much sense to me, but I enjoyed playing roulette, especially when I won on number 17 on the second spin (though alas we weren't playing for real money). It was still an interesting way of staging the piece, some scenes were long and others over in seconds and we got to see one of the longer ones twice due to the fickle nature of fate. I caused a brief flurry of worry when I put a $25 chip from my winnings on a single number and the croupier realised that he didn't have enough chips in this pretend casino to pay me if I won. Luckily for him I put it on 25 and 28 came up - right next to it on the baize. Oooooh so close. If I won I think I should have got to run the whole thing and keep the actors and the impressive seagull head that was used in one scene.
We then went for a wander round the building to see what else was on. On the top floor we entered a room where a young man in swimming trunks was lying on some sand, apparently on a beach, but then you noticed office equipment stuck in sand or the foam lining of an office chair being used to represent a cloud and bits of rolled up carpet. The actor chatted to us as we came in, asking where we had been on holiday this year and then another character entered the room and the mini play began. It was called "Uzbekistan Airways" (as it was set in the offices of this airline) and it was very funny. An office worker was rebelling against the strictures and boredom of his daily grind and had constructed a beach in his office, because despite working for an airline he had never traveled. I was quickly engrossed both in the play and the whole idea of all these different things going on in one building. It was very different to the Chekhov casino and yet the eclectic nature of the evening was what made it special - very much like a mini Edinburgh Fringe, all under one roof - but you'd end up taking a chance on a show because it started at a certain time or because you happened to be on that floor of the building. And there was proper interaction as well. Later in a play called "Soft Armour" the audience were dressed in lab coats and I would be called upon to clean the arm of a corpse and take part in an identity parade. There was some very strong writing and acting on display in all the stuff I saw as well as inventive use of space. And though I started the night a little wearily, I was invigorated by the end of it all. It's well worth a look if you're in town - it goes on until the 16th October. Give it a go.
It was another of those events that left you looking at the world as if it was all a part of some theatrical installation. On the way home I saw a man behind a glass front door to his block of flats, struggling with some keys as his rottweiler pressed its nose against the glass. It just looked like something that you might have seen as you turned a corner at the theatre. But luckily I didn't get so carried away that I tired to interact with this one.
