8246/21165
Two dates in three days? I reckon my wife might fancy me.
Today we went into town for
an excellent fishy lunch at Parsons in Covent Garden and then on to the theatre to watch Giant, a terrific play about Roald Dahl and whether he was anti-semitic (spoiler - he was). John Lithgow plays Dahl brilliantly, so well that occasionally I forgot it was him and not Dahl on the stage. It's funny for a play - with at least four properly good jokes in its two hour run and although set in the 20th Century, is very current with it's discussions about who is the more transgressed in the Israel/Palestine conflict and whether a children's author's controversial/unpleasant views have any impact on their work.
Dahl had many tragedies in his life and the play beautifully captures his love and empathy for children, but also why his own childishness (the reason he gets his readers so well) is a negative and destructive force. His vanity and pig-headedness and prejudices are unpleasant and sometimes shocking, but his nastiness and inappropriateness are also the reason he wrote such fantastic books. And the central issue of Israel and Palestine, the kind of subject that is very hard to discuss in level-headed terms, is brilliantly covered. There's a lot to think about.
My own experience of the play was slightly over shadowed though by the fact that about ten minutes before the interval, just as the argument is reaching a glorious crescendo, someone in our section of the audience did an audacious silent but violent fart that hung over us like mustard gas until we could escape to the foyer.
For once in my life I was not the culprit. I have been guilty of accidentally gassing innocent people in times of illness. One time at the Burton Taylor Rooms in Oxford as the audience queued on the stair case, I let out a vegetarian bean fart of such depth and pervasiveness and unwillingness to shift that I had to dive into the toilet in shame, as though I had shat myself. I hadn't shat myself and no one would have known I was the guilty one had my mortification not driven me to hide, but the crime was so bad I couldn't stand and watch the destruction I had wrought. Even I thought it smelled bad. And it was one of mine.
This afternoon the theatre was hot and the air was still and there was nowhere for the fart to go. This was no time for accusations or disruption and we had to hold our noses and hope the smell would somehow dissipate. But it did not. Had someone actually shat themselves? Perhaps.
It was an elderly audience.
A teenager in the seat in front of us, who hadn't really been engaged with the play, was laughing her head off, but holding her nose. Was this her doing? Or did she just appreciate the suicide bummer who had created this dirty but invisible protest? The girl and her mum did not return for the second half. An admission of guilt? Hard to know.
Catie didn't accuse me, which I suddenly realise is suspicious - that would usually be her first port of call. Was she the phantom farter? She definitely smelt it, but had she dealt it? I didn't even consider that at the time, so impressive was the possible pantomime of her nose-holding disgust. I believe her to be innocent -she's certainly never created anything so awful in the last two decades that I've known her. But the true criminal had got us so confused that I am now even potentially blaming the woman that I love.
Maybe it was me. Had the fart slipped out unnoticed? Or had I just forgotten, like that time I ran around Fort Bragg dressed as a ghost? No. I was the victim here. Not the criminal. I would have scampered in shame had it been me. Everyone knows that about me.
Hard to believe that any of the polite looking old ladies near us could be so inconsiderate and bold. This was the kind of fart that could easily have been more than a fart. It might even have been more than a fart. Would you risk it, ten minutes away from the interval?
Anyway the experience somewhat clouded (no pun intended) my enjoyment of the play and as time passes will be the main memory of the event and eventually the only thing I recall about it.
Though ironically there is a part of the play where there is supposed to be an unpleasant smell on stage, so maybe the theatre can pay some seriously ill petomanes to sit in the audience and fart at the appropriate times so everyone can enjoy the play as it is written.
Go and see it.
Take a peg.
Or a cork.
No farts in the second half. I think we have to say it's not looking good for the teenage girl. I think there might be a whodunnit play in this.
The Mousecrap?
A very funny RHLSTP with one of my favourite newer comics (though don't tell him that) is out today.
Listen here.And delighted to announce that true legend Bernie Clifton will be my guest at the Sheffield RHLSTP on 5th June. Not many tickets left.
BOOK HERE.
