Review – Volcano, Vaudeville Theatre

Nearly at the end of its run so really this is just to remind ourselves in future years that we were there because it is unlikely we shall remember otherwise.

The twin-piqued interests of Volcano at the Vaudeville were that (a) it is Noel Coward‘s rediscovered, previously un-produced 1956 play and (b) Andrew has a geophys fascination with volcanoes and so it just had to be squeezed in before it lies undiscovered for few more generations.

Review – Woman in Mind, Vaudeville Theatre

Andrew was very, very busy in his garden Saturday morning.* Trimming his vine, to be exact. Thank goodness he didn’t fall on his secateurs or – worse – knock himself out with the rake.

Imagine that he had awoken in some fantasy life of his own making:  sitting all day in a theatre watching his all-time favourite productions on some kind of bizarre cerebral loop: Hairspray, Entertaining Mr Sloane, La Cage aux Folles, things with Jasper Britton (excluding Fram, of course) or perhaps – and more appropriately – constant mental re-runs of The Chalk Garden.

Imagine his whole world viewed through a proscenium arch. Perhaps Maria Friedman would serve him tea at his imagined matinées and a Dame of the British Empire would hook him up to a Merlot drip each evening.

Imagine Andrew’s tailor-made world fashioned to exclude Caryl Churchill, Pinter, Joe Sutton and Polly Stenham. It would be a world without theatrical boredom, restlessness or frustration. A perfect world of complete and utter theatrical Judith Bliss.

Which brings us, and not before time, to Alan Ayckbourn‘s Woman in Mind.