Ok so last week’s blog was a bit heavy. My mate George (the old actor/manager remember?) gave me a little stick over this. Still I sharpened it and use it as a pencil now.
Last night was club night at KBDG and we read two plays. The first being ‘Kill Jill’ by Mark Wheeler, a surreal piece selected as a possible one act vehicle for our youth team. A play which I warmed to as time went on especially the part of the gun totin’ George (no relation) whom I thought was great.
The second was a reread of Simon Mendes da Costa's ‘Losing Louis’. We read this play last year with a view to putting it on and you will of course remember it was on at the Playhouse a couple of years ago. The play is excellent and ranks as number 6 in my best selling book ‘B****r I wish I had seen that’. The play is set in a family bedroom in two time frames, the 1950s and present day, we see the effects of Louis' infidelity reverberating in his own lifetime, and in the aftermath of his death. The unfolding family saga is compelling and, as more and more is revealed, everything makes perfect sense, while not being wholly predictable. Although one would not imagine this to be the most likely material for amusement, perhaps the most striking thing about the play is the many excellently constructed and equally excellently delivered jokes, along with situations themselves that border on the farcical. A great play.
What else has been happening? Well not a lot as we while away the summer waiting for the rain to stop. I am sat here clothed in a woolly jumper on the 9th of July for goodness sake. Global warming? Yeah right.
I do like to include a funny in this blog and I am assured by the sender this is a true story:
An elderly British gentleman of 83 arrived in Paris by plane.
At the Customs desk the man took a few minutes to locate his passport in his bag and the official showing the usual warm French welcome asked sarcastically “You have been to France before monsieur?”
The elderly gentleman said, “Yes”.
“Then you should know to have your passport ready for inspection.”
The elderly gentleman said, “The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it.”
"Impossible! The British always have to show their passports on arrival in France!”
The man gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained;”Well, when I came ashore on the Beach on D-Day in 1944, I couldn't find any bloody Frenchmen to show it to.
'Ah the old entente cordiale, if only I had a bottle now.