A dream for the third millennium

Mainly Titania

A week ago we paid our first visit to the Bridge Theatre (by Tower Bridge) to see Gwendoline Christie - best known for warrior roles in fantasy and science fiction films - doing Hippolyta/Titania. A statuesque performance, as suggested in the snap above, not without merit, but nothing much like the performance by Vivien Leigh, as suggested in the snap below.

Vivien Leigh

But to start at the beginning, we got to know about the show from a review in the Guardian and got ourselves Saturday matinée seats at the front of the temporary seating over what was sometimes the back of the stage, that is to say in the open end of the horseshoe of regular, tiered seats, with the open space in the middle largely given over to people standing, something I have not been good for for many years now; pretty much a modern take on the (very successful) Globe a short way upstream. And we were warned that the production was to be a festival of acrobatics, cross dressing and so forth.

We were then pleased to find that there was a half hourly service to London Bridge from Epsom, so packed up our picnic and off we went. And very surprised to find how busy the London Bridge area was, going east, this Saturday lunchtime. Busy with all kinds of people. Surprised also at how big the Belfast was, despite having been over it a couple of times. Clearly time for our next visit, perhaps to find the medals (or perhaps uniforms) donated by BH's naval uncle who served on her during the Korean War.

The Blenheim

Next up was a Blenheim quite unlike the one which I used to know well in Epsom - which certainly did not go in for higher grade bonsai.

There did not seem to be any park benches in the vicinity of the theatre, but there were clusters of steel arm chairs irregularly concreted into the ground. I suppose the idea was you could sit next to someone without crowding them in the way that you would on a regular bench. Much too cosy for the fastidious folk of today. Fine view of Tower Bridge, last visited by me on a Bullingdon. I also remember the days when the public houses of the area were both seedy and rather rough.

On into the theatre, also very busy, but we managed all of drinking seats, drinks and a programme. With the drinks being quite modestly priced by London theatre standards.

Despite having, a first time for me, downloaded the tickets onto my telephone, they failed to get us access to the auditorium as there was no signal in the basement. I had to nip upstairs, get the tickets on screen and nip downstairs again before they vanished. After which all was well.

Our sitting seats turned out to be rather good, worth the extra we paid for them, right on top of the action in the round, a lot of it in the air, on wires.

There was indeed a lot of acrobatics and cross dressing, with all the speaking helped along with discrete microphones. So good fun, and the plot was still there, but most of the poetry and romance of the original was lost. But what else can you do? I have trouble enough, and I imagine that precious few people these days would understand much of the language of the original. Nevertheless, I do prefer vaguely renaissance costume, rather than the modern dress of this production.

Helena and Hermia good. Puck good. Mechanicals good, even if there was rather a lot of them. And I have learned (from BH) that the mechanicals were named after their trades, in one way or another, which I don't think I knew before.

Out to feed in a rather flashy, but not particularly expensive, place called the Coal Shed. We had not reserved, so were shunted upstairs, which turned out to be a good thing, it being quite noisy downstairs. Service very good. Food over complicated. Perhaps we should have gone for meat.

For starter, bread and olives, satisfactory.

For main, sea bream, hispi cabbage and Jersey Royals. Sea bream fine, but it came with a rather sharp dollop of salad, perhaps fennel, which I did not care for at all. And the hispi cabbage was not properly cooked and was covered in a yellow sauce. But not too bad if you scraped all the sauce off and cut up small the undercooked bits. Bearing in mind that I was dentally challenged at the time. Potatoes fine.

The wine

For dessert, passed. Once again, disappointed at the poor selection of desserts in mid-range restaurants such as this one. I was, in any case, rather full of what had gone before.

To drink, a Greco di Tufo, 'Cutizzi', a type of wine which we usually like. This one was OK, but we thought not worth the money. Guided tours available. See reference 3.

The fakes

Plenty of bottles decorating the place, but the ones we lifted were empty, and always had been. Presumably specially made for display in places like this one.

The gates

You get fancy garage doors if you can afford a flat in the area. Which was still buzzing when we left the restaurant. Including a managed herd of youths charging about on bicycles.

Pleased to catch a train to Epsom from London Bridge with just a few minutes to spare.

The lion, of wardrobe fame

An interesting new venture. We shall keep an eye out for future productions. Perhaps the pantomime at Christmas?

PS: the Indian boy, visible in the first snap, did not make it to our performance. Or at least, if he did, I missed him and his owl.

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=US+statesman+boasting. As far as I can recall, the last time we saw the play, getting on for ten years ago now.

Reference 2: https://www.coalshed-restaurantlondon.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.feudi.it/. Very arty. You get to the wine eventually.

Reference 4: https://bridgetheatre.co.uk/.