I have a number of passions in my
life. They have changed positions as I have aged, but the overall list is
pretty stable. Horseracing, theatre, old murder cases, cooking, reading, and my
lovely wife are all in there somewhere plus a couple I have no intentions of
telling you about. With the exception of horseracing, sadly missed, they have
all come to the fore in these weird endless weeks of lockdown. For the
statistically minded I am now on Day 62 of self isolation. Made bearable by a
first class service from Waitrose. And all those lovely delivery drivers.
Especially the ones bringing whisky and fags. Benign weather and quiet skies
bring birds in abundance to our small garden and acts of kindness, small and
large, are witnessed everywhere. Only the daily parliamentary briefings of grim
statistics and pictures of rainbows in small terraced windows remind you that
there is a battle going on out there.
Theatre is just one of the
numerous casualties and for those who perform in it as well as watch it is
particularly frustrating. I am trying to do my bit for the professionals,
anything I watch of theirs I make a small donation to their cause. The National
Theatre’s Twelfth Night was well
worth the £10 a sofa seat ticket we paid. I calculated that if everyone who
tuned into it did the same they would have raised around £4,000,000. I hope
they did. But that does not help those who perform for fun or seasonal
visitors, especially the ones that have small theatres to run. From my own small
world I am thinking of the lovely Manor Theatre in Sidmouth, our favourite
holiday place and the home of England’s only permanent summer professional Rep
Company, and, closer to home, Dunstable Rep, Welwyn’s Barn, and St Albans
Company of Ten. And further afield Hitchin’s Queen Mother and Toddington’s
TADS. Been to them all in my time. How will they survive I ask myself?
It ain’t going to be easy. Even
if they can perform, not easy doing a social distancing Romeo and Juliet, will
anyone come in the foreseeable future? Hopefully any gloomy prognosis will be
thrown into the dustbin of history before long, but commonsense tells me that
the next couple of years could be pretty fallow ones in the small time
theatrical world. If they do not have strong reserves and, possibly, kindly
local authorities, I reckon we lovers of their art will be asked to put our
hands in our pockets. I would not blame them. We will need what they offer even
more when this pandemic is finally over. If they sink it will be all our loss.
The even smaller companies, those
without a permanent base, do not have the same problems. They can’t perform but
they do not have a stonking large building to support. And if they are
enterprising they can still have theatrical fun. The small company I am
involved with, Harpenden High Street Players, have spent the last few weeks
doing Zoom play readings and, ambitiously, recording our own version of Wilde’s
The Importance of Being Earnest. As I
said to the director driving it all, it helps to keep us sane. And it might
raise some money for a worthy local cause.
So life in lockdown has not been
too bad. Those interests listed above all help with my sanity and as I only
walked into town to visit the local betting shop, closed, I can cope with
talking to the odd duck on the riverbank every day. I worry, as we all do about
all the usual things in these unusual times, wouldn’t be normal if I didn’t.
Spent one night fretting that if I had toothache I would have to pull the
bloody tooth out myself and spent another fretting about an imagined power cut
spoiling all the lovely food I had stocked up in our freezer. And they are just
the ones I can tell you about.
I don’t fret about theatre, or
not yet. But I do hope they are all still there when the virus is in the history
books. The National will survive, as will the Harpenden High St Players and
their ilk. But what about those others I have mentioned. The ones with
expensive buildings but no high profile and no income. They are scattered all
over the country. And in my own small part of the world that means the Company
of Tens and Dunstable Reps. So, if asked, add them to your list of ever growing deserving causes. The NHS, God bless em, help us when we are ill and are deservedly at the top. But theatre helps to keep us well. If they fold we will all be the poorer.
Roy Hall
Roy Hall
