"There should be ashtrays everywhere". The Silver-Fox's first reaction on seeing the set for Chris Luscombe's revival of Michael Frayn's 1975 Alphabetical Order at Hampstead Theatre last night. "Everybody smoked all the time".
When my beloved was not silver just foxy he was a junior reporter on The Southern Evening Echo and it was with this in mind, plus the fact that men of a certain age (his) tremble at the memory of Imogen Stubbs as short-skirted, private investigator Anna Lee in the eponymous 90's TV show, that I had booked us into this trip down newspaper memory lane.
Set in the cuttings library of a provincial daily the play shows the effect of a new ultra-efficient assistant librarian Lesley/Chloe Newsome, on the chaotic work place and the lives of the librarian Lucy/Ms Stubbs and her journalistic colleagues. She tidies the filing system, steals Ms Stubb's boyfriend, John/Jonathan Guy Lewis, and eradicates the cosy bolt hole that comforts the quietly drunken features writer Arnold/Gawn Grainger and Wally/Michael Garner's terminally married leader writer. The cast is completed by Penelope Beaumont as Nora, an amazingly patronising features editor who carries with her a whiff of Celia Imrie's Dinnerladies-HR manager Phillipa, and Ian Talbot as Geoffrey an ageing boy scout of a messenger. They're all very good which makes it more of a mystery as to why they are appearing in this incredibly dated, immensely boring, play-in-aspic production.
Christopher Luscombe's last outing as director, Enjoy, is completing it's very successful West End run. It is a brilliantly dark piece in which Alan Bennett predicts the rise of the heritage industry, Northern terrace life becomes a living museum with human exhibits. In Alphabetical Order he has directed a play that could be on view in such a museum under the title "This is How We Did It Thirty Years Ago".
Mind you the Monday night audience seemed to love it... the gasp of surprise and delight as the lights came up on the second half and we saw the results of a good tidy up on the set was equal to any "reveal" moment on a prime time make-over programme. Similarly the giddy sense of naughtiness induced by the cast flinging folders of cuttings around the office had them nearly wetting themselves with delight., though, judging by their average age, inappropriate bladder leakage might be a not infrequent companion.
Random snippets from our post theatre discussion:
following up his critique of the ashtray situation (Ms Stubbs does light up, cigarette-wise, for one brief moment) the Silver-Fox reminised about compressed air tubes that were used to transport copy from one part of the newspaper empire to another and begged me to stop buying theatre tickets when there were still re-runs of Frasier he hasn't seen yet,
I commented that the bottle green corduroy jacket being worn by Gawn Grainger was the spit of one we picked up in a vintage shop in York,
my God she's 48!
and didn't Jonathon Guy Lewis' hair cut remind one of Robert Redford's floppy fringe in All The President's Men. Now that was a great piece of writing about a newspaper office.
When my beloved was not silver just foxy he was a junior reporter on The Southern Evening Echo and it was with this in mind, plus the fact that men of a certain age (his) tremble at the memory of Imogen Stubbs as short-skirted, private investigator Anna Lee in the eponymous 90's TV show, that I had booked us into this trip down newspaper memory lane.
Set in the cuttings library of a provincial daily the play shows the effect of a new ultra-efficient assistant librarian Lesley/Chloe Newsome, on the chaotic work place and the lives of the librarian Lucy/Ms Stubbs and her journalistic colleagues. She tidies the filing system, steals Ms Stubb's boyfriend, John/Jonathan Guy Lewis, and eradicates the cosy bolt hole that comforts the quietly drunken features writer Arnold/Gawn Grainger and Wally/Michael Garner's terminally married leader writer. The cast is completed by Penelope Beaumont as Nora, an amazingly patronising features editor who carries with her a whiff of Celia Imrie's Dinnerladies-HR manager Phillipa, and Ian Talbot as Geoffrey an ageing boy scout of a messenger. They're all very good which makes it more of a mystery as to why they are appearing in this incredibly dated, immensely boring, play-in-aspic production.
Christopher Luscombe's last outing as director, Enjoy, is completing it's very successful West End run. It is a brilliantly dark piece in which Alan Bennett predicts the rise of the heritage industry, Northern terrace life becomes a living museum with human exhibits. In Alphabetical Order he has directed a play that could be on view in such a museum under the title "This is How We Did It Thirty Years Ago".
Mind you the Monday night audience seemed to love it... the gasp of surprise and delight as the lights came up on the second half and we saw the results of a good tidy up on the set was equal to any "reveal" moment on a prime time make-over programme. Similarly the giddy sense of naughtiness induced by the cast flinging folders of cuttings around the office had them nearly wetting themselves with delight., though, judging by their average age, inappropriate bladder leakage might be a not infrequent companion.
Random snippets from our post theatre discussion:
following up his critique of the ashtray situation (Ms Stubbs does light up, cigarette-wise, for one brief moment) the Silver-Fox reminised about compressed air tubes that were used to transport copy from one part of the newspaper empire to another and begged me to stop buying theatre tickets when there were still re-runs of Frasier he hasn't seen yet,
I commented that the bottle green corduroy jacket being worn by Gawn Grainger was the spit of one we picked up in a vintage shop in York,
my God she's 48!
and didn't Jonathon Guy Lewis' hair cut remind one of Robert Redford's floppy fringe in All The President's Men. Now that was a great piece of writing about a newspaper office.
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