This week I was reminded of how much I love living in London.
This week, I saw three shows.
This week, I saw one show that made me feel tremendously uncomfortable, one that made me wretch and another that made me want to tear off my clothes and launch myself at the lead actor. Sadly, the uncomfortable one is the one that I’m still thinking about.
Monty Python, synonymous with all that is both Funny and British, are now 5 men, all of who qualified decades ago for the old age pension. Strapped for cash, yes really, they’ve reunited for a handful of shows in London, shows that will net them enough income to recline in a Bora Bora bungalow until they expire, pass on, slip from this mortal coil, until they, like their famous parrot, die.
The show was funny; they did You Were Lucky, Palin sang The Lumberjack Song, they did the Spanish Inquisition and they stifled giggles when they did The Dead Parrot. They gathered in white tuxedos for the finale and sang Bright Side of Life. When all 5 were on stage in was obvious how much more Palin seemed to enjoy it than either Jones or Cleese, both of whom might have preferred to stay indoors and watch the tennis with a sherry. But seeing them dance about with 15 women in lace negligees made me feel uncomfortable. Seeing them dance about with 15 women in French Maid tunics fitted with exposed plastic breasts made me vomit a little bit in my throat. #pervyoldmen
Worried that I might be prematurely transforming into a pearl clutcher, or worse still, a Liberal voter, I’ve since shared my concerns with a few friends. Some think I should lighten up, most responded with something along the lines of… that was how Monty Python was back then.
Back then, Benny Hill used to run after naked Page 3 Girls giggling and groping like an adolescent with his first erection. Back then, students forced each other to perform sex acts in public to gain admittance to Greek societies. Back then, teachers chastised pupils with a bamboo rod or a wooden ruler. Back then, women were the property of their husbands to dispose of as they wished. Back then, bosses chain-smoked at their desks and slapped the exposed thighs of their underpaid secretaries. Back then, homes were insulated with asbestos, tomatoes thrived under DDT showers and cars spewed the fumes of leaded petrol into the acid rain. Back then…
Sorry, but if I can’t realistically expect a marriage proposal from a gentilhomme wearing a redingote, britches and a black silk top hat, I can’t buy into the idea that what went on back then is relevant today. If I am not allowed to wear a bonnet, if I am not allowed to smoke wherever the f*ck I like, if I have to work for a living, if I can’t play croquet, or sew, or paint, or dry flowers, then I’m telling you that plastic boobs on a 20 year old dancing around a man who could be her grandfather is not cool, not here and now.
The crowd who went along to see Monty Python were a pretty mixed bag, but overwhelmingly comprised of Baby Boomers who’d made the expensive trip into town to relive their Thatcher-y youth. I’ve no doubt that for them, my father’s generation, the peep show that interspersed the absurdist humour was entirely appropriate, was a bit naughty^, was even a bit funny. For me, in light of the trial that was unravelling at the Crown Court down the road and the viral video of a young woman blowing 24 men in Magaluf, it felt more than anachronistic, it felt more than uncomfortable, it felt wrong.
I would not have been offended if the 15 negligée’d women were accompanied by 15 men wearing nothing but swimming trunks, but they weren’t. I would not have been offended if the 15 plastic-boobed women were partnered with 15 plastic-penised men, but alas, the men were wearing three-piece suits. I also think that between them, Jones, Gilliam, Cleese, Palin and Idle are among the funniest humans that have ever walked this earth. If they’d just sat down on the loo for 5 minutes and jotted their immediate, unedited thoughts, it would likely have been funnier than plastic breasts.
But thank my lucky sky full of stars*, this week, I saw two other plays.
Weighed down heavily with jetlag and barely able to keep my lids from closing, my eyeballs were treated to the delights of two Richards sharing Tolkien and rather dashing beards.
Richard III, starring the Hobbit, was a steamy, sweaty summer evening spent watching a rather small man play an evil genius in the very intimate (read, suffocating) Trafalgar Studios. I was so hot I thought I might have to strip and run into the stage, but The Critique was sitting beside me and I was wearing lace-up shoes. You might remember Martin Freeman as the naked guy in Love Actually or you may know him best as his current incarnation, the guy who makes Cumberbatch look even sexier in Sherlock. Whatever you like really, I’d never seen Richard III, it is gory and violent, it is a history, my least preferred of Shakespeare’s three genres, but this show was wonderful. Made all the more so by the appearance of the excellent Gina McKee as Elizabeth and the array of Tom Selleck-y moustaches. The play was set in the 70’s.
Unfortunately, as good as that Richard was, the other was a triumph. The Hobbit’s taller mate, Thorin Oakenshield, was getting all John Procter over at the Old Vic and I had been waiting impatiently for months to see Richard Armitage writhe in torment and regret. He gurned, he strutted, he screamed, he lifted an entire woman of the ground like she was a bag of potatoes and he cried bloody murder as the Christians played out their witch-hunt around him. He was extraordinary, the play is exceptional, I was transfixed for three hours and barely noticed when he took his shirt off.
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953. He wrote it as an allegory for McCarthyism, he told the story of the 1692 Salem witch-hunts to warn his contemporaries of the dangers of a pack mentality and cash powered media. Arthur Miller used a back then story back then which, when played today, was entirely relevant, entirely entertaining…no plastic boobs required.
^I’ve since learned that the show was choreographed by Arlene Phillips; the woman who created Kenny Everett’s Hot Gossip
*Deliberate reference to the soundtrack of my life at this moment, Coldplay’s Sky Full of Stars
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