The last of the woods laid low

So where to begin. A quarter hour before my departure from the office in the chaotic and completely unmanaged handover of my boss on maternity leave, I learned that my godmother had lost out to the cancer that was diagnosed five years ago. She would have been sixty-nine next month. It felt like being crushed, slowly.

So when I hit Dublin, I went, with a kind and patient friend, to meet for a sleepy jar at the Gresham - Smithwicks, in honour of the lady herself. It was her pint of choice, to be had laughing loudly on the creaky plastic benches on the balcony of the Dalkey Island Hotel. There, I would drink Club Orange (in a bottle with a straw, please) and Scampi Fries, and bury 10p pieces in the garden for our next visit and another round of Pacman in the lobby. We'd look out at the island and pile on more jumpers, pretending it was really summer.

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Behind the scenes parkbenching in Dublin was productive, and met with old friends for pints, dinners, tea and cakes, and theatre, and new friends for chats about books and language. Shared a restaurant with Mr. Black while we ranted and rolled our tired eyes through more Trebbiano and outstayed our welcome with dessert we couldn't afford. Saw Mangan, Poe and Mahony onstage in Daniel Reardon's latest, Bleeding Poets at Dublin's New Theatre, a great space hosted by kind people, filling the gaping voide left by the closing of Andrew's Lane. Sublime, ridiculous and the beginning of a very long couple of weeks.

I was back in London for eighteen hours before taking my first flight to Norway. When I woke up the next morning in the cozy wooden house with the potbellied stove, I saw that in Trondheim, children ski to school.


When we filed out of the cathedral, the snow began to fall.

Moonwalking in Chinatown

So, funny as, yours truly has reviewed two whole plays for a paper. Oh, yes, P. Bench, theatre reviewer extraordinaire. I've been going long enough, and I know what I like... and I know a bad play when I see one, but does this qualify me? Probably not.

At any rate, the more recent of the two was Moonwalking in Chinatown put on by the Soho Theatre on Dean St.

Basically, it's textbook (oh, yes, I read one) promenade theatre, toodling as it does through the real, live streets of Chinatown with no less than four separate audiences, mobile crew and rotating actors in an hour-long show. The beginning needs work! HOT, people, it was hot. The wait was long. We stood on a landing looking at goldfish-like officeworkers who had no choice in the matter. There was no water, or air, and there were old people... ugh. And there's a bar, a NICE bar downstairs. Sort it out. Otherwise, on with the show, make a long story short, we were handed colour-coded tiles and led out under coordinating lanterns.

We were one with the actors, confused them for us, for passersby, for lunatics, whatever. The stage was shopwindows, supermarkets, smelly back alleys and beatific courtyards (yes, they can be) in the middle of high-priced real estate. It was a silly story, really, but they did a slam-bang job of it and we all learned a bit about things Moon Festival and Chinese.

But I'll tell you what we didn't come away with: a MOON CAKE, people. Come on. Is stellou the only one to provide?? Or am I going to have to haul my white, ill-informed beeehind down to Chinatown to sort the lotus seed paste from the cured ham? Because I can tell you, it won't be pretty. And how will I avoid the damn duck eggs? Where is that clever, bespectacled chinaphile? You know who you are. And I bet you know the real word for a chinaphile. So I went cakeless. Really, it would have been the perfect end to a fun night, but hey.

I commend the fine folks at Soho Theatre for putting it all together, t'ain'tabeen easy. Likewise, I'm impressed by the web gear for this show: a ‘moonblog’ which is cute, but could be a little rougher around the edges, along with mp3s of interviews, and some of the cast even announced their availability on facebook for chats after the show (soho bananaboy and duriangirl among others). This is exactly the sort of thing that theatres should be taking on: make it different, make it lively, and for Chrissake stop flogging half-dead donkeys up and down the West End.