Behind me I heard a man with a foreign accent ask about a group of elderly men in dark red berets, gathered in the Circus. ‘Paras,’ someone told him. ‘Oh, I thought they hated her.’ Then, ‘Why are there Parisians here?’

‘Paratroopers!’ someone growled.
A woman in front of me turned round. ’And they didn’t hate her- they admired her. They wished she was on their side to negotiate with the Common Market.’ After this, silence for about half an hour.


I could hear protesters on the north side of the Circus: a single voice shouted ‘Maggie. Maggie. Maggie’ and a chorus answered, ‘Dead. Dead. Dead’.


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Stephen Sondheim , at 50, was the leading composer/lyricist of his generation, but 'Merrily We Roll Along', famously flopped on Broadway in 1981. However, Sondheim didn't give up, and thirty years on Michael Grandage's Donmar Warehouse production won the Olivier 'Best Musical' award.

Friday night's crowd at The Harold Pinter Theatre seemed to like this new production, but it was one of those audiences that seemed to be top-heavy with friends of the cast. Not that the cast weren’t good –they were- but the play still has its flaws.


A major weakness is that the story's told backwards, spanning two decades from the protagonists' washed-up middle age back to their early optimism ; it lacks the, ‘What happens next?' that normally drives a plot.


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So much of the area this year is cordonned off for the use of runners only that I need to take a detour if I'm watch the start from near the park gates. I walk all the way down to the Observatory. Overhead, the drone of helicopters, and I recall my husbands words to me just before I left home: 'Security is 40% up on last year.' Is that the reason why there seem to be fewer supporters in the park?


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Shakespearean themes emerge in a play which starts with the enforced marriage of a French Princess to someone who doesn't even know that she's female.


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'You should know these streets like the back of your hand,' I said to my companion, as we plunged into a housing estate off the north end of Camberwell new Road. To be fair, he was born and raised nearer to the Camberwell Green end, opposite the bus garage, so no wonder he was as lost as I was. As I taught at a school in the neighbourhood for eight years, I should arguably have been au fait myself. But it had all changed since the tower blocks went up. All we had to go on were the maps on hoardings that stood on corners with helpful 'You are Here' arrows. The murky street lighting didn't help much. So it was more luck than judgement that brought us to the Blue Elephant. Just as we were about to give up, I spotted the neon-lit logo next to a lamp-post, and an open doorway opposite.

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The Tara Arts director said fund-raising for a first class venue for South Asian performing arts in London is going well. Work is to begin later this year. It can't happen too soon for me - the play went on until 10.25pm, which rarely happens in London. Worse, it ended just as the train left for Waterloo so I had to wait for the 10.53pm one and didn't get home until half past twelve.

I should have waited until the show's tour reaches Stratford East, where it can be seen from 6th to 9th of March.


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I've neglected this blog recently, but that’s set to change. It’s not so much that I’ll neglect my other blog –hopefully I’ll continue to review plays - but current projects will take over.

A busy week brought two surprises: I learned I’m to teach a day course on Pride and Prejudice, and, for the very first time, one of my short stories appeared in a magazine.


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I was intrigued by the sound of this venue - a former weapons factory off Rye Lane, Peckham. Thanks to the Transport for London site maps I was more or less able to pinpoint the location -up a tiny alleyway opposite Peckham Rye railway station. The narrow passage led to a weird courtyard decorated with black and white graffitti in gothic style, featuring a huge animal skull.......

It's usally a disadvantage when an acting ensemble has no members aged over forty; here it proved an asset. A youthful cast and the nature of the venue were well-suited to a distinctive interpretation of Shakespeare's tragic tale.


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I've developed an addiction to Greek drama. It 'privileges' the regular viewer, just like a TV soap. At first it makes little sense - overwrought characters ranting on about horrific crimes committed elsewhere, backed up by a chorus. Mainly they blame fate, but more often they name names, which over time stand for abstract concepts such as courage and beauty - Hector and Agamemnon, Helen and Cassandra. Some you know about, some you get to know, but eventually, when you've seen a few episodes, they become familiar. You get caught up in the multiple storylines.

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It's not often I feel sorry for the actors in a play; in this case a fine cast and a talented creative team were let down by the lead. There's no disguising unsuitability when the perpetrator appears in almost every scene. Not that I blame Autumn Ellis, making her professional debut. Even allowing for press night jitters, whoever cast her has a lot to answer for.

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