Tonight, I finally booked for Best of Enemies at the Noel Coward Theatre. This play concerns a series of debates on US television between liberal writer Gore Vidal and conservative William F. Buckley in 1968 - the interesting twist here, given the time and place we're talking about, is to cast William Buckley as black! Had my own seat review on Seatplan to guide me in picking a seat - this is one of those restricted view/legroom theatres. And despite all the theatre offers flooding my inbox, I found the cheapest tickets for this on the official website! Mind you, what with See Tickets doing the selling, I found myself with a second, unexplained, booking fee..
I thought I'd look nearby for food - the nearest place with availability (third I tried) was, to be fair, only a minute's walk away from the theatre! (The joys of a Monday night.) So I booked a table there - it was Spaghetti House. The queue at the bus stop rather phased me - there was such a huge queue, it looked as though there was a shortage of buses! Now, there were a few I could get - when the first of these happened along, I dreaded a scrum to get on. Mercifully, a #205 arrived at the same time, and most of them gravitated towards that! Now, that explains the scrum - that bus is so rare, its arrival should make the papers..
Well, I arrived at the restaurant with a couple of minutes to spare, and was shown straight to my table - the only free table I could see. I perused the menu - it's ages since I've had minestrone, so thought I'd have that: fancied a carbonara as well. And the usual 250ml of sauvignon blanc - unusually, described as a carafe, here! Well, the waiter happened along - I have to say, I've never seen such ridiculously smiley waitresses. This one looked so gleeful, she might burst at any moment. Either it's a great place to work, or they're on something.. her smile didn't falter one bit as she informed me that they had no sauvignon blanc - so I had chardonnay. And they'd just served the last of the minestrone - all right, I'd have calamari. I was ok with the carbonara.
When the wine arrived, it became apparent that the reason they serve 250ml carafes is that the wine glasses are smaller than that. Seems easier to buy bigger wine glasses, but hey. The wine was decent, the calamari passable. The carbonara was lovely, actually - and quite filled me up, which was a good thing. The theatre had emailed to ask me to arrive half an hour early, and I was coming up to that - happily for the restaurant, who'd given me a two-hour max. When I asked for the bill, the server seemed a smidgeon confused.. she brought me the bill, waited a respectable five minutes, and asked whether I was ready to pay now! Ehh..?
Well, they're nice, and worth the slightly higher than usual service charge. Trotting over to the theatre, I walked along the world's longest roped-off area, leading around the side! Nobody waiting in it, just the people to check bags. Right to the end I had to walk, and back. In a side door then, and up (and up and up) what you might call a refurbished fire escape, to get to the Balcony. Would you believe, after all that climbing, the bar is another flight of steps up! (Mind you, I think I spied another on the climb..) Lovely bar, after all that - I got a drink, in plastic so I could take it in with me, and sank into a seat until showtime. When I had a fun climb - down, this time - to my seat, on the aisle in the front row:
Ok seat - decent legroom, actually, and I had the aisle to swing my legs into, and to leave my stuff in. The guy beside me was massively disappointed when I arrived, having all his things on my seat.. Only thing was, we kept having to get up to let people in and out! Anyway, 60s music plays at the start of each half. This is actually a great play for anyone with an interest in the 60s - the events depicted take place then, of course, and we get some 60s fashions: but we also get some real-life stills and film footage, projected onto the side of the stage. Most atmospheric.
The debates take place during a presidential election campaign, and start during a Republican convention in Miami. The fun starts when they move to a Democratic convention in Chicago - the Democrats are at sixes and sevens following the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, and things aren't helped at all by the city's reactionary mayor, who isn't at all a fan of the revolutionary spirit of the age.. and, faced with protests against the Vietnam War, sends in the National Guard.
As to the debates themselves - they're fun, the participants treating them like boxing matches and using them as an excuse to slag each other off. Mrs. Buckley is frequently seen giving her husband advice, as Gore Vidal's companions also do for him. Each is very keen to best the other, and the verbal battles are terrific. Not that they're given great rein to wax on about subjects at length - television doesn't lend itself to that. Gore Vidal is certainly better at soundbites - but it's perhaps Buckley who has the definitive final word, warning that democracy cannot survive when menaced by moral supremacy. For the latter part of the play, such argument as there is finds itself superseded by the riots erupting around them.
So, not one for those hoping for deep political discourse - but it is riveting, and a real window into the past. Runs till the 18th.
Afterwards, I had a choice of buses home - bless continual decent internet access, so I could keep adjusting my journey to find the most comfortable trip (least walking).
For the next week or so, it's all Up in the Cheap Seats (UITCS)! Tomorrow, for some reason, I hadn't seen their advertised event to see Orlando, based on the book by Virginia Woolf, and showing at the Garrick. For this, however, I found the cheapest tickets from Official London Theatre (OLT).
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