Not the title of a new play, just an explanation of my lack of postings for the last three weeks. I've been busy with the Sevenoaks Literary Celebration, on holiday in the West Country, and running the bar and taking photographs for the Stag Theatre Company production of A Chorus Line. Back to normal theatregoing as soon as possible, I hope. Meanwhile...
Othello at the Donmar with Kelly Reilly, Ewen Macgregor and Chiwetel Ejiofor is probably the hottest ticket of the year and I don't have one. I had October 15 marked in my diary as the day to go online and buy, but technology defeated me. The ATG website didn't exactly crash, though it was extremely slow, but I found a problem with Javascript. Each time I got as far as selecting a seat, the seating plan failed to load. This happened with my laptop and my desktop, using two different browsers and after downloading a new version of Javascript. No luck despite 90 minutes of trying. By Tuesday all the tickets for the run were sold. Did anyone else have this problem? Perhaps only people with Mackintosh got tickets? Perish the thought. Anyway, if you have a spare ticket or two for this show, pass it on to me.
Charles Spencer of the Daily Telegraph is normally quite a kindhearted critic and when he likes a show, he comes up with the sort of quotable quote that theatre managements love to put on their billboards. He was the one who coined the phrase 'pure theatrical Viagra' after Nicole Kidman bared all on stage at the Donmar. But when he doesn't like something he really puts the boot in, as he did this week in a review of Kebab at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, calling 'a pile of rancid cliches'. In the Guardian Michael Billington clearly didn't like it either but was more restrained in his comments.
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