A Brush With Theatre Royalty

Late this afternoon I found myself in Waterloo and close to The Old Vic Theatre. Thinking that I might be able to secure tickets for a performance, maybe in the coming week, I went inside to the box-office. To my amazement, I was able to buy a ticket for that very night! The play is Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and it stars the lovely Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones. Not only was I able to buy a ticket - for a mere £24 - but it was for a seat in the front row! 

As I sat there waiting for the curtain to go up, in the front row of this beautiful old theatre, my face just inches from the stage where Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson etc. had all performed, I looked about me and thought I must have died and gone to heaven. It was at this very theatre, seventy-six years ago, that the birth of Vanessa Redgrave had been announced to the audience by Laurence Olivier, during the intermission of a performance of Hamlet in which he was appearing with her father, Michael Redgrave.

This version of Much Ado About Nothing had been updated to the 1940s (although the beautiful language had not been changed), and concerned American GIs stationed in England during the war. London critics have been unkind about the production and its radical idea to have the young lovers of the original now played by ancients, but I have to say that the shift didn't bother me in the least.

At one point, Vanessa Redgrave had to come right to the front of the stage and crouch behind a wagon to hide from, but listen to, two women who are talking about her. She was only a couple of feet from me which was quite thrilling. But what happened next was truly magic. In the original play, her character wonders aloud to herself if what she had heard can be true. But in this production, Redgrave, still kneeling, turns to the audience and speaks directly to the person closest to her. Tonight, it was me! She brought that still-beautiful, sculptural face close to mine and directed her questions directly to me. I think I melted a little bit - I certainly fell in love with this seventy-six-year-old woman. What a truly great honour! At the interval the woman next to me said she thought I wouldn't forget that in a hurry. She is right - it is a very special moment that I will always remember.

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