GREENWICH THEATRE

Talk about scandal. One minute I’m at the theatre enjoying a perfectly respectable piece of Restoration — the next I’m in the depths of Lewisham doing the twist (again) between a woman dressed in a yoga mat and a man in a faux-bearskin loincloth, mixing mojitos for people in bubble-wrap. Theatre is truly transportational.

To explain. Once upon a time I worked at this week’s venue: in the teensy, affable bar, tucked beneath the stairs to the stalls like some hastily-assembled franchise of pre-bedtime children. I spent my quiet shifts leafing through free copies of bad books and wondering how long my post-graduation unemployment-funk would last. Then I’d meander home through the Greenwich foot tunnel, where I was once unsuccessfully mugged by a man wearing a pirate’s outfit. Actually, working at the Greenwich Theatre provided me with the best address I ever had — Cyclops Mews, Homer Drive, Mudchute, Isle of Dogs. A right old postcode odyssey.

The Greenwich Theatre has the munificent, orphans-at-Christmas feel of an old regional venue, which is the first good reason for paying a visit. Because Greenwich doesn’t feel like London. It feels Dickensian and quaint, with its antique market and naval college and (immolated) tea clipper. And how many other fringe venues are only a hop, skim and jet along the Thames? With more transport links than anyone imagines, Greenwich is utterly charming.

Tonight’s performance was The School For Scandal, Sheridan’s corrosively satirical comedy of manners — incidentally one of the first grown-up plays I ever saw. In fact, still have the production script. Inside are the perspicacious scribblings of a flourishing tosspot. For example, ‘Humour — but they don’t laugh?!!’ as if deadpan had been invented circa 1991. Also inscribed for posterity is the dubious assertion that ‘Sarcasm is the god of poetry’. This does not bode well for the memoirs.

The company’s protean actors were also doubling up for tandem performances of Doctor Faustus. Stupendous workload notwithstanding, the direction was devilishly inventive, the production riotously and repeatedly hilarious. Fittingly —or perhaps I was under the influence of Greenwich’s salinity— the theatre stage itself seemed reminiscent of a galleon’s deck.

But is this centuries-old play still sea-worthy? As Mr Garrick’s prologue puts it:

A school for scandal! Tell me, I beseech you,
Needs there a school this modish art to teach you?

The backbiting affectation and fiendish sniping of the 1770s seems very much alive, judging by any newsagent stand’s offerings — Celebrity Mums, Rundown And Unfit! screams Heat’s latest headline. Bitchity bitch-bitch.

Which brings us back to yoga mats and loincloths. As every theatre-going veteran knows, hang around long enough in a post-show bar and you will inevitably be invited in cavalier fashion to a fancy dress party that a friend’s friend of the cast is throwing. The party in this case —jointly hosted by painters and sexual health workers— was replete with hijinks, gossip and drinking songs about STDs, though with mercifully fewer asides. Even Sheridan’s Ofsted-recommended School For Scandal can’t compete with that.
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Sink into a sofa at THEATRE 503

This week’s venue has the dubious prestige of being the only theatre I’ve ever walked out of. Not, rest assured fringe-lovers, because of anything to do with the production. Just good old-fashioned self-humiliation.

A few years back, during the first half of a touching and reverential play, a platoon of youths behind me were flipping texts to one another. More unforgivably, the text alerts in question were Crazy Frog Redux and Akon singing about how lonely he was. They tittered maniacally and eventually I responded with an exasperated:

‘Oh, come on…’

At which point I realized that the audience —and actors— were staring at me, horrified, presuming my outburst concerned their deeply touching reconciliation scene. I made my excuses like a tabloid hack at a brothel.

If only we’d been on Broadway. This week saw James Bond and Wolverine battling disruptive audience members, with Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman directing their celestial fury towards a front-row audience member who forgot to switch his phone off. They may have hyper-gadgets and super-powers, but these boys are squealishly susceptible to cracks in the ol’ Fourth Wall.

Thankfully tonight’s performance was interruption and mortification-free. Theatre503, formerly the Latchmere, formerly the Grace theatre. Same venue, but now with added mysterious numbers. Perhaps 503 is the meaning of life. Perhaps it just means they get to the top of the listings. Either way it’s refreshing. It’s also deceptively close to Clapham Junction, which means pretty much anyone in London should be able to get to it easily with no excuses. Take note, my esteemed colleague, who burst into the theatre half an hour late.

Fearless new writing is the directive of the 503, and over its burgeoning years it’s previewed many authors of whom I am intensely fond and covetous, particularly the talent-crammed collective that was The Apathists. They even coaxed the skyrocketing Tom Hardy in to run an actors’ gym —Shotgun— culminating in a tremendous production of Blue On Blue.

However, seeing a play here about a death-row warden, I felt the inscrutably malevolent voice of my old principle in my head: ‘What’s the relevance, darling?’ (don’t read into that, he called everyone darling. Or at least in our impressions of him he did). What interest could a British audience have in an American execution block?

Judging by sniffling into scrunched tissues at curtain call, a helluva lot. The Ones That Flutter by Sylvia Reed —like its set— is a beautifully compact production. An outstanding evening begins front-of-house — not in all OWE theatres do you get the artistic director taking your ticket. The auditorium is a snug descent down into a confidential playing space, which doesn’t require traps and tricks when the acting is up to scratch. Which it certainly was tonight. To top it off, which other fringe venues have a sumptuous private antechamber to discuss the play in at the end of the show?

The perfect place to confront noisy audience members. Not, remember, during the performance.

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