As a family treat my dad bought all his kith and kin (and my Aunty Jean who is also with us this year, who is not an actual relation, but we call her Aunty anyway) tickets to see Shane Ritchie in
Scrooge at the Bristol Hippodrome. You can imagine how excited and delighted I was to be able to see such a thing. It was sure to make all the experimental theatre I have seen recently look tawdry and sad. Shane Ritchie! From off of
Up To Something (a show which I contributed a couple of sketches to, making it, I believe the first time my material was ever broadcast - though alas Shane didn't appear in my stuff).
In the early 1990s when Shane hadn't really been sure what he was going to do next I had even appeared with him on a stand up bill in Ealing. He was rubbish. And so was I.
But only one of us was going on, 15 years later, to appear as a miscast Scrooge in a quite poor musical version of the classic Dickens tale. Thank God it wasn't me, as I hadn't learned the lines or dance routines and it would have been even more embarrassing.
I felt sorry for Lionel Bart whose excellent and witty
Oliver had clearly provided the inspiration for this humourless and boring travesty.
But it was nice to do something as a family and my sister, ever mindful of Christmas being a great institution, had paid a bit extra to get us a special hospitality room to go into before the show and during the interval, with drinks and programmes provided for minimal cost. Perhaps watching a story of how Christmas and family is more important than making money might make me give up on my plan to drive home to London immediately after the show so I could get on with my work and decide just to stay with my mum and dad forever hugging them and not earning any money, because love is more important.
Luckily the production actually just made me hate the idea of Christmas and also tiny angelic boys who need to walk with a crutch and also all humanity. So it was easy to leave my family behind at the close.
But the capacity audience and at least half of my family enjoyed the show very much. There are some great magic tricks in it and although I would have liked to see Tiny Tim shot in the face with a harpoon during his syruppy solo, it seemed to reduce the other less cynical human beings in the crowd to tears. I wanted to shout out "That bit wasn't even in tune! So what if he's only about four years old. This is a professional production and I expect the highest standards from all performers. No it doesn't make me think he is sweet, merely incompetent. Booooo!"
To be fair I was never going to like it. It's not really my bag. I prefer walking round spooky old buildings looking at drama students arsing about and am only amused by cats drinking from taps like they are people. So what do I know? Hopefully Ritchie's success might mean that the
Up To Something team get back together and from there who knows what heights I might scale?
