From Varsity, 7 March 2008
There are loads of plays on this week, and all forms of theatre are rubbish, so it has not been a good week. Of all the performance art forms, the theatre is the most singularly terrible, as agreed by people all over the world. In fact it is very easy to prove its worthlessness simply by describing it, much as it is possible to prove to people how much they dislike seagulls, simply by mentioning them.
The experience of watching a play goes as follows:
Beforehand: Purchase tickets, potentially from the internet, necessitating a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey style selection of seats, from a map which invariably ignores important details, like how much the paunch of the lady next to you will spill tsunamiesque over your own thigh, and how close you are to the ice-cream chappo for half-time. The two are potentially connected.
Then for the next ten months, or week, you fret furiously over the tickets, for which you have already exchanged your money. There’s no going back. You’re not in Kansas anymore. Will it be fun? What will the people say? With whom should I go? These are just some of the questions racing through your mind, and there are many more.
The dilemma about whom to take is acutely felt. In theory it should be the perfect platform for crafting a cheeky chirpse, as the outing encompasses all of the elements essential to a date; specifically disproportionate expenditure, long periods of silence, feeble wordplay, and a suicidally wistful sense of anticlimax. And that’s before you start excusing yourself with puns based around the theatrical uses of the words ‘performance’ and ‘wooden’, as in:
Nathalie: Did you see ‘Harry Potter’ in ‘Equus’?
Ed: Yes, I thought his performance was a bit wooden.*
Nathalie: Well, in some ways, I don’t think your performance was wooden enough.
Ed: I’m sorry. I couldn’t see the wood for the tease.
But if one doesn’t take a girl, whom does one take? Going with a male friend, jovial as it might be in theory, runs the risk of making you look like an uglier(much) version of televised homosexuals Jake Gyllenhal and Heath Ledger (pboh), happy to embrace their love in the documentary ‘Brokeback Mountain’, but uncomfortable displaying their mutual affection on the red carpet.
Taking one’s mother is also out of the question, for fear of her suspicions that you have fallen into either of the traps above, and are taking her in fear and shame. The most sensible option is probably to fly solo, perhaps selling the spare ticket to a tout at the door, like this:
Tout: Mary Poppins, buy or sell.
Ed: I’ve got one to sell, I paid £50 for it, but I’ll let you have it for £30.**
Tout: (rustling his leather jacket, with a rustling sound only possible with leather) I’ll give you a tenner.
Ed: Right you are, sir.
The zenith of the evening’s misery, of course, doesn’t happen until you’ve sat down, expecting to be entertained, when all of a sudden all the lights go out and two people (sometimes more) wearing face-paint and fancy dress wander on and start talking, and then don’t stop talking for hours and hours, almost literally never stopping. They often don’t even talk about fun things like videogames and football, but instead about how their not shagging the people they want to shag, and how they want to kill so-and-so because he makes them so cross. It’s a bit like being muted and strapped to a chair in a dark pub whilst Iain Duncan-Smith talks to a cadaver about tax law, at a volume just loud enough to prevent coma but just too quiet to understand.
Then, when they do finally stop, after autumn has set in and all your library books are overdue, you give a little celebratory clap and leave the room to drink some gin and set fire to yourself. But you only get out for about a minute before somebody announces that it is, in fact, only half-time. At least you can stop reading a newspaper.
*Some of the names have been changed.
**Still changed.
The experience of watching a play goes as follows:
Beforehand: Purchase tickets, potentially from the internet, necessitating a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey style selection of seats, from a map which invariably ignores important details, like how much the paunch of the lady next to you will spill tsunamiesque over your own thigh, and how close you are to the ice-cream chappo for half-time. The two are potentially connected.
Then for the next ten months, or week, you fret furiously over the tickets, for which you have already exchanged your money. There’s no going back. You’re not in Kansas anymore. Will it be fun? What will the people say? With whom should I go? These are just some of the questions racing through your mind, and there are many more.
The dilemma about whom to take is acutely felt. In theory it should be the perfect platform for crafting a cheeky chirpse, as the outing encompasses all of the elements essential to a date; specifically disproportionate expenditure, long periods of silence, feeble wordplay, and a suicidally wistful sense of anticlimax. And that’s before you start excusing yourself with puns based around the theatrical uses of the words ‘performance’ and ‘wooden’, as in:
Nathalie: Did you see ‘Harry Potter’ in ‘Equus’?
Ed: Yes, I thought his performance was a bit wooden.*
Nathalie: Well, in some ways, I don’t think your performance was wooden enough.
Ed: I’m sorry. I couldn’t see the wood for the tease.
But if one doesn’t take a girl, whom does one take? Going with a male friend, jovial as it might be in theory, runs the risk of making you look like an uglier(much) version of televised homosexuals Jake Gyllenhal and Heath Ledger (pboh), happy to embrace their love in the documentary ‘Brokeback Mountain’, but uncomfortable displaying their mutual affection on the red carpet.
Taking one’s mother is also out of the question, for fear of her suspicions that you have fallen into either of the traps above, and are taking her in fear and shame. The most sensible option is probably to fly solo, perhaps selling the spare ticket to a tout at the door, like this:
Tout: Mary Poppins, buy or sell.
Ed: I’ve got one to sell, I paid £50 for it, but I’ll let you have it for £30.**
Tout: (rustling his leather jacket, with a rustling sound only possible with leather) I’ll give you a tenner.
Ed: Right you are, sir.
The zenith of the evening’s misery, of course, doesn’t happen until you’ve sat down, expecting to be entertained, when all of a sudden all the lights go out and two people (sometimes more) wearing face-paint and fancy dress wander on and start talking, and then don’t stop talking for hours and hours, almost literally never stopping. They often don’t even talk about fun things like videogames and football, but instead about how their not shagging the people they want to shag, and how they want to kill so-and-so because he makes them so cross. It’s a bit like being muted and strapped to a chair in a dark pub whilst Iain Duncan-Smith talks to a cadaver about tax law, at a volume just loud enough to prevent coma but just too quiet to understand.
Then, when they do finally stop, after autumn has set in and all your library books are overdue, you give a little celebratory clap and leave the room to drink some gin and set fire to yourself. But you only get out for about a minute before somebody announces that it is, in fact, only half-time. At least you can stop reading a newspaper.
*Some of the names have been changed.
**Still changed.
