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Oh St Anthony. Why hast thou forsaken me?
We seem to be getting invited to quite a few screenings and opening nights, occasionally just a little bit too close to the day it's happening, like my name is on a list of substitute celebrities that you can call upon if the proper ones aren't going to show up.
We were invited to The Importance of Being Earnest ages ago (sorry to the people doing The Producers who invited us to tonight's press night two days ago) and it's very nice to get a free date night (if you ignore the cost of the babysitter - but I'd rather they got the money than the theatre fatcats) so we happily accepted.
I took Catie out to a lovely restaurant round the corner called Pret a Manger (French! fancy!) and then headed to the Noel Coward theatre. We got there unfashionably early and the paps were able to warm up their cameras and practice for the proper celebs by taking some photos that will be used by nobody except me in this blog.
We did spot some proper famous people while we were there. Neil from the Inbetweeners was in the bar standing near the free water tap. Catie went up to get some water and I think he thought she was coming to ask for a selfie. But she wasn't. Though ironically she really wanted one as her friend is a big fan of the show.
I also bumped into Ed Gamble in the interval and saw Ian Mckellen talking to David Tennant and best of all passed Christopher Biggins on the stairs.
I am not 100% into the work of Oscar Wilde - which he won't mind me saying because there's only one thing worse than being talked about and that's not being talked about. Plus he is dead - and his wit can be a bit much,
as pointed out by this Monty Python sketch.But come on, it still holds up after over 100 years, there's some great lines in this play (maybe not two hours twenty worth - ooh look at me, what an Oscar Wilde) and this production is a lot of fun, playing with the text and the sexuality of the characters (all seemingly desirous of heterosexual marriage, whilst desperate to get off with characters of the same sex as them) and Stephen Fry is unbeatable as Lady Bracknell - ("the part he was born to play" Ed Gamble if you want a quote for the poster). I was caught up in the silliness and pantomime and the farcical conceit of the play (hopefully for Ernie the name is as much as an aphrodisiac as Wilde seems to think it is) and the sets and costumes and actors are all first rate.
Hayley Carmichael pretty much stole the show, playing a pair of very different servants and when the standing ovation came at the end, it was she who got everyone to their feet.
We were too tired and live too far away to go to the after show party with Vanessa Feltz, Zandra Rhodes (who I thought was dead, but not on today's evidence) and Archie from Balamory, but I suspect that like the play it was a flamboyant affair.
We got the train home. Thanks to the internet I never travel without my diary, though it's generally pretty dull because it's written by a man who'd rather to home to bed than get drunk and accuse Zandra Rhodes of pretending to be alive.
