Tonight:
9°c
Tom Stoppard's Every Good Boy Deserves Favour at the National is my dream play. Yes, yes, it's a brilliant and chilling indictment of Soviet treatment of political dissidents. The performances by Joseph Millson, Toby Jones and Dan Stevens are pitch perfect. But you know why I loved it? It's 65 minutes long with no interval.
I wept with joy when I heard. That means time for supper afterwards and a proper conversation with friends - because so often they're the casualties in my ongoing love affair with culture. It all looks so promising when I book. We arrange to meet for leisurely drinks. Then, on the day, I scream into the theatre at 7.25pm, hair like a banshee, bellowing apologies. There's no time for a drink - or a kiss - or a programme.
It's all about me, of course. What a hard day I've had. Why I can never leave work on time. I deliver a five-minute lecture on the playwright's intentions (plagiarised from Wikipedia). Then, just as the curtain goes up, my friend observes quietly: "I've left my husband" or, even better: "Did I tell you about my affair with another woman?"
Dear God, how could I have been so thick? This is a play in itself. I resolve to find out all at the interval. But you try having a discreet chat at the bar as the hoorays crank trays of red wine over your head.
Three-and-a-half hours later we're battling to see if the restaurants are still serving at 11pm. No joy. Even Pizza Express says sternly: "Have you booked?" (Now that really is a sign of recession.) My friend dashes off to the last train, murmuring: "Well, perhaps another time."
Of course, when I call about the next four-hour, surtitled, Serbo-Croat mime play, she's washing her hair. Frankly, I'm not surprised. And don't get me started on dates who go white when I mention the history plays.
So thank heavens for short plays. You don't have to eat a pre-theatre supper at 5.30pm. You're more likely to tackle adventurous work (even the cheapest seat in the gods is bearable for 70 minutes). And you don't piss off your friends.
I hate to be philistine. But when you see a master storyteller at work (Stoppard, Pinter, LaBute), they get so much done. You come out dazzled - in the time it takes to watch an episode of The Wire.
I'm even prepared to forgo drinks in the interval if the match finishes early. Once, seeing Howard Brenton's Paul in the round, I kicked over a beaker of red wine, then watched in agony as it bled, drop by drop, into the white sand. Even the actor playing Jesus was sloshing through it in his sandals.
I've never admitted it before, Howard. But I promise to pay for the dry cleaning, if you keep the next play short.
