NUMBER Two Dressing Room, the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford: my home for nigh on a quarter of every year.
In the dying days of 2017, it’s full of the debris of Christmas: half-eaten boxes of crystallised ginger, a perishing poinsettia, scented candles as exhausted as we are.
It is here, after the evening pantomime has come down, that the principals have been summoned by a sombre management. I am wearing an 8ft rat’s tail made of latex. Over the relay can be heard the hubbub of a still departing, still-delighted audience. The remainder of the company, in their sequinned walk-down costumes, are heading back to the stage, to be told in their turn the news that is broken privately to us: news at which Idle Jack, in his motley and bells, lets out a howl that can be heard across the river.
Theatre is, perhaps, the only real democracy. Backstage, not only are we oblivious to differences of class, race, gender, belief, sexuality, age or weight, but those differences are valued and, to a casting producer, valuable. Pantoland, especially, is a Utopia, a cocoon of unreality: Oh, the hokey cokey! and who can sing the loudest. In the twice-daily tinsel and dry ice, there’s no place for aggressive tumours, shattering announcements and unexpected deaths.
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin Januay 17, 2018 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin Januay 17, 2018 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
