Public Laughter

Today

A very jolly evening last night at the Theatre Royal, Bath at a performance of Private Lives by Noel Coward. It's always fresh and the dilemma still has relevance for today. It must have been quite shocking when it was written.

We took Lizzie who's very fond of Noel Coward.

"This calls for a Blog", I said to Lizzie. "Oh, everyone knows that story," she said. maybe, but it's still fun to tell.

In My Day

Theatre treats were fairly rare back in the 70's and early 80's as we had little cash and generally needed a babysitter. For some reason, we'd acquired tickets to see Private Lives at the Devonshire Park theatre in Eastbourne. I think it must have been in about 1982. We took Lizzie with us and went off to the theatre in great excitement.

It was a matinee and the place was full of genteel ladies who lunch. They'd probably popped in from the backwaters of East Sussex for shopping and thought they'd take in a little culture.

The play started. Our seats, if I remember, were quite high up and we were practically at eye level with the actors on their hotel balconies. As the play progressed the audience occasionally tittered in a polite, English drawing room kind of way. All except Lizzie, who was fully alive to the humour and guffawed without restraint. The actors just loved her, eventually turning her way as though she was the only person in this God-forsaken provincial dive worth the trouble of acting for. We laughed too, as much at Lizzie's evident enjoyment as at the play.

Experiences like that colour our feeling about certain things for the rest of our lives. Although last night's audience laughed heartily in all the right places so that Lizzie didn't stand out quite so much.