Seeing Imelda Staunton on Stage!

Monday, February 9, 2009
London

It was Black Monday--literally! The skies were leaden and rain came down in sheets! It is unusual to get such heavy rain here in London--most times it is just an annoying drizzle. By the evening, the streets were actually flowing and I was afraid of slipping as I don't think my shoes are equipped to handle muddy ones. It was funny but when Mark, our concierge at NYU, was leaving the building and I asked him if he had forgotten to carry an umbrella, he replied, "I have one. I just can't be bothered". To carry it, he meant, and I thought that was a very English way of putting it indeed.

I taught my two Writing II classes--odd, but it seems as if my classes are only just beginning. What with my hoarse throat and the snow of a week ago, this was a first real class. I had to sort out items on the syllabus to bring us back to speed, discuss the change in plans--no field trip to Cornwall for my Writing II (B) class. We're going instead to Suffolk (Constable Country). I also handed out field excursion assignments to London's ethnic quarters--which I must try to cover myself! The classes went well--we've started our discussions on Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism--and my students seem to be engaging with it rather enthusiastically.

After classes, I went up to Yvonne Hunkin's office to pay my electricity and media bills, but she was in a meeting and I only met Ruth Tucker. Back in my office, I graded one batch of homework before I set out for my evening at the theater. I was excited as I would be seeing Imelda Staunton in Entertaining Mr. Sloane at Trafalgar Studios.

The streets were flowing copiously by the time I left NYU. It had rained all day and the mood was dismal. I actually used the Thomsons' birthday present to me for the first time today--a Nautica Umbrella For Two--it was massive! Our English friends in Fairfield, Connecticut, Jonathan and Diana Thomson, had gifted it to me in July when they got to know I'd been posted to London. Diana had written in the card: "This is the thing you're going to need most in Blighty--a really good brolly!" And how right she was! The umbrella was like a huge walking canopy around me and sheltered me completely on this day made for ducks! Thanks, Di!

I nipped into the Tesco Express at the corner of The Strand on Trafalgar Square for just a second and re-emerged with two packs of Prawn Mayonnaise sandwiches, It had been a long time since I had eaten my rather frugal lunch of a tongue sandwich and a cup of creamed asparagus soup at my desk during office hours. I knew that Rosemary had a ticket for the same show but since we hadn't made any plans for dinner, I figured I better get a bite to eat or else my stomach would rumble throughout the show! Unfortunately, I did not see Rosemary anywhere during the show though I looked for her frantically before it began, during the interval and at the end. We must make more definite plans next time!

Trafalgar Studios is a very modern space, unlike the ornate 18th and 19th century theaters I have been frequenting. Though I had the cheapest seats on the very last row, the slope was so steep that I had a completely unrestricted view of the stage. Large black and white posters of English actors such as Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Edward Fox and John Gielgud, decorated the stairwells--each taken between the 1960s and 1980s! It was fun to see what these thespians once looked like and, in the case of many, such pictures are a revelation about the years, no decades, one needs to slog before international fame can finally come one's way in this very uncertain acting business.

As for the show, it was such a surprise to me. I thought it would be a comedy--that was what the blurb said, but gosh, it was a classic example of a Dark Comedy. It started funnily enough with Kath, a landlady in the early 1960s, taking in a lodger (I finally understood what the term 'lodger' means--a paying guest--and what the term 'lodgings' means--a rented room in a house) named Mr, Sloane. Kath is 42, single, desperately lonely, bullied, belittled and browbeaten by her obnoxious brother Ed, and completely taken in by the handsome, sexy, young Mr. Sloane.

Kath was played superbly by Imelda Staunton (I bought tickets for the play only to see her as I had been completely blown by her performance as Vera Drake in the film of the same name for which she won the BAFTA for Best Actress in 2005), Mr. Sloane was played by Mathew Horne and Ed was played by Shakespearean actor Simon Paisley Day who supported Staunton brilliantly.

The range of emotions Staunton had to exhibit in the course of the play was stunning. In turn, she was a lecherous seductress, a harassed daughter, a caring landlady, a pleading sister, a heartbroken lover. The inimitable Staunton slipped into each one of these guises effortlessly and kept the play moving along brilliantly. What I did not expect was the harshness with which she was treated--as a woman and as a sister, her treatment was deplorable and in our day and age of politically correctness, very difficult to watch. Her father ("Dada" played very competently by Richard Bremmer) was pushed around by both his children, then assaulted by Sloane who could have brought much more menace to his role.

The two other great bits of the production were the set that captured succinctly the "hideousness" (as one reviewer put it) of working class domestic interiors of the era (horrid busy wallpaper, stained flowered rugs, a lumpy old velvet upholstered sofa, late-50's kitschy knick-knacks) and the brilliant use of a Jim Reeves track, "Welcome to my World". Another ingenious touch was the playing of pop hits from the early 1960s before the play began and during the intermission. It put us beautifully into the mood, the milieu and the moment and evoked the desperation of suburban families and of the brother and sister duo whose need for self esteem allows them to overlook the murder of their father by the unscrupulous lodger.

The other brilliant thing about this play was the writing itself by the late Joe Orton. Glancing rapidly at the Playbill during the interval (which costs 3 pounds and which I, therefore, never buy but invariably borrow!), I saw that he was killed by his gay partner in the 1960s, being snatched away in the prime of his writing career. A dramatist of no less a stature than Harold Pinter spoke at his funeral calling him a marvelous writer.

Orton brought a great deal of his own working class background into the plays he wrote (particularly in this one). His attempts to transcend it through the procurement of an education and his own struggle with his sexuality were grist to his creative mill--like Mr. Sloane, Orton was apparently bisexual. Because this was a classic Black Comedy, I found it odd when the audience laughed at lines and scenes that were not even remotely funny--in fact, they verged on the tragic--but then, the scenes and the characters' actions and reactions were so unpredictable and surprising when they occurred that the audience quite lost sight of what would be the appropriate mode in which to react. It was a very good night at the theater, made memorable by Staunton.

It was still pouring when I made my way out of the theater and caught the buses back home. For some reason, I felt quite worn out but then I remembered that I had awoken this morning at 5.30 am and I was no longer surprised.