Cocktail Party

A new venue for theatre for me - the Coronet in Notting Hill. Its in the process of renovation, and not very far down the line. The theatre space doesn't even have seats, just wooden chairs bolted into place. Walls are unpainted, but the downstairs bar, for all its sloping floor, was actually a very attractive shabby chic. I would have happily gone there for a drink and in terms of a bar it was far better than most West End offerings.

Alas I couldn't say the same for the play. And I don't think that was all down to the wretched cold I was coming down with.

We started with a lecture about the play and its connections with both a Greek tragedy and the author, TSElliot's, strong Anglo-Catholic faith. That was helpful in understanding the play. But one shouldn't need a preview. And all it really explained was why it had been written that way, not why it was so poor a subject. The cocktail party is about love and relationships, but in a horribly dry, academic, pretentious, intellectualising manner.

The cocktail party, with which the play starts and ends is a stilted affair with a group of completely unbelievable characters acting in ways only theatrical types would imagine of a group of upper class people of largely indeterminate occupations. The person missing from the starting line-up is the main protagonist's wife who he says has had to leave to look after a sick aunt, but later admits she has left him. For no specific reason. The uninvited guest who no one seems to know promises to get her back on the condition he doesn't ask why she left. If this all sounds baffling and preposterous, well it was. An interminable second act is I think meant to bring out that some people have to recognise love for each other and make the best of their partner's faults, while some are destined to love as in charity and god rather than other people. So the young female guest at the first party we are told at the end went off to become a missionary and was crucified by non-Christian savages in some untamed island in the Far East, This revelation which in any normal play would be the crushing denouement is instead delivered deadpan, and doesn't much interrupt the party.

This is a woeful play from another era where there were people who had infinite amounts of time on their hands for pretentious and arid debate.