I went to the Lyric in Hammersmith tonight to see
Nights at the Circus, a production by the
Knee High Theatre company
who I went to see a couple of years ago doing their show, "The Wooden Frock".
Knee High are clearly moving onwards and upwards as they were performing in the surprisingly large main house at the Lyric (I think I have only seen stuff in the studio here before and was frankly astonished to see this sprawling three tiered venue with a high proscenium arch) and it was totally sold out. We had seats right at the back as well despite having booked in midweek, and it seems this show is a smash hit, which I was delighted about. It's a genuinely entertaining two and a half hours with some great performances and some beautiful imagery and puppet work. On a par with the geese umbrellas were tigers with heads made from adapted buckets with lights in them, whose snarling and growling was effectively produced with the use of saws rasping against metal. When the tigers were happy the saws became their slowly wagging tails. It was ace.
Plus there were some bare ladies and some ladies kissing for any of the philistines who don't enjoy trapeze work and saws being used for purposes other than sawing things. Something for everyone.
I had a bit of an embarrassing incident in the interval. As the hoards were filing out of the theatre I was talking to my friend about what she thought of it so far. She had been standing right next to me and we came to a bit of a blockage in the ice cream queue. I sensed her stopping to join the queue so I put my arm round her waist and said, "Shall we go downstairs for a drink?" But suddenly my arm was being unwrapped and as I glanced to my side I saw that somehow I had managed to put my arm round the waist of a woman I had never met before and then apparently propositioned her out of nowhere. Had my friend been more on the ball she would have ducked out of the way and left me to face the music alone, but she is kinder than that and quickly unwrapped my arm when she saw what I was doing (correctly assuming this was a mistake on my behalf rather than an attempt to get rid of her and find myself a new friend for the second half). My brain could not quite understand what had happened and how my friend had been substituted for a stranger, but I blurted out an apology and luckily only turned red by the time I was down two flights of stairs and had been able to understand exactly what I had done.
It was fortunate that the woman I accosted had not said, "OK, let's" or I would have had an even more embarrassing choice on my hands. If I had been in a sit-com I would have had to cover up my embarrassment by dating and perhaps even marrying the stranger. But luckily in the real world misunderstandings are more easily explained.
It's all a bit of a blur but I think the stranger was amused rather than affronted by my unwarranted act of affection. I however felt weirdly unsettled for the rest of the show. I couldn't even properly enjoy the bare women or the lesbian kissing in the show, ironically because I felt I had already accidentally made myself look like a perverted sex pest.
But I still recommend the play if you can get tickets, just be careful who you grab hold of in the interval.
