Retired - Not Out: Richard II - Bridge Theatre, London

Down to London, and our first trip to the Bridge Theatre since we went to see "Straight Line Crazy" in June 2022.

An uneventful ride on the 15.12 to St Pancras, a short ride on the Northern Line to London Bridge tube station and then a brisk walk in the drizzle toward Tower Bridge.

Before the play - sustenance, courtesy of The Real Greek. Our table (Number 1) gave us an excellent view of the far bank of the Thames:

the Shard and City Hall:

and a somewhat closer Tower Bridge:

My dining companion seemed happy enough:

while your narrator remained enigmatic:

Greek meze: pork and chicken skewers with Aegian slaw, lamb meatballs, moussaka, chips and rice:

Followed by chocolate mousse cake and cheesecake:

When we stepped back outside it was darker but just as wet:

The theatre was less than 100m away:

Through the bag-check and into the foyer:

and then through into the theatre:

Obligatory selfie:

And so to the play. We were there to see Richard II - one of the few of Shakespeare's plays that we had not yet seen. That it was on at the Bridge Theatre was a bonus - we had been several times before and always enjoyed our visits. Further, the play was directed by Nicholas Hytner, whose work we like (in fact, all the plays that we had seen at the Bridge Theatre - "Allelujah!" (2018), "Alys, Always" (2019), "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (2019) and "Straight Line Crazy" (2022) - were directed by him). The cherry on the cake was that the play featured three actors of interest.

DISCLAIMER: I have never watched a scene from, let alone an episode of, the TV series "Bridgerton". I could not tell you what channel it is on. Until I researched it for the purposes of this blog post, I could not tell you if it was a modern or period piece. I still could not tell you what it was about, or what any of the characters are called.

The part of Richard II was being played by Jonathan Bailey, who I knew only from playing Jack Patterson in the 2014 BBC sitcom W1A. It was only after I ordered the tickets that I was told that "he's in Bridgerton" - which for me was less of a recommendation than a warning. In 2024 we went to see "Love's Labour's Lost" at the RST in Stratford, and the part of Berowne was played by Luke Thompson, about whom I was also told "he's in Bridgerton"; I confess I remember little about his performance, but I do remember that there was an inordinately large number of women of all ages in the audience who appeared to be present only to experience the "Bridgerton effect" and who appeared to care little about anything or anyone else...

The second actor of interest was Clive Wood (who happens to be exactly one week older than me); I first came across him when he appeared in a 1984/5 ITV drama called "Mr Palfrey of Westminster". Mr Palfrey was a mild, cerebral, middle-aged, middle-ranking British civil servant - who also happened to be a spy. His assistant (heavy) was the red-haired and bespectacled Blair - played by Wood. Wood was set to play John of Gaunt but, sadly, on the night we were there (as for much of the previous week) Wood was indisposed and his part was most ably taken by understudy Martin Carroll. I later read that Wood had withdrawn from the whole of the run, though I don't know why.

The third actor of interest was the lovely Amanda Root who, I am told, many people will know for her part in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion - though my own interest was piqued later, after seeing her play Maeve Brennan - one of Philip Larkin's colleagues, lovers (and, for 18 years) one of his two dearest women friends, in the 2003 BBC drama "Love Again". In Richard, Root played two roles: Green - a courtier and loyal supporter of Richard, and also the Duchess of Gloucester.

I won't attempt a formal review of the play - the reviews listed below give a fair assessment. I did enjoy it, and happily recommend it to anyone who likes Shakespeare's history plays.

At the end, the cast enjoyed standing ovations, including a solo for Bailey, which he generously encouraged Royce Pierreson (Bullingbrook) to share in. It has to be said that Bailey's deepest bows received the loudest cheers of the night - though not, surprisingly, from the large numbers of young women (and a few young men) to whom he was bowing, but rather from those members of the audience (of a similar demographic) behind him, who were treated to a perfect view of his rear end encased in a tight pair of Levis...

We recovered our coats from the cloak room and made our way outside, where it was continuing to drizzle lightly. We headed back, as quickly as I could manage, to London Bridge tube station, but after a few hundred yards I was forced to admit that the calf muscle injury I had sustained a few weeks earlier had flared up again, and that walking the rest of the way to the tube, to say nothing of the long walk at the other end, was out of the question. With more than a little luck on our side we saw an orange light in the distance, took out a second mortgage and hailed a cab back to St Pancras, where I was able to hobble to the escalators, up to our platform and onto our train.

As we passed through the barrier we saw the ticket collector taking one young man to task about both his ticket and his rail pass, telling him in no uncertain terms that he was authorised to travel to Kettering, but that if he was still on the rain at Leicester he would be arrested by the British Transport Police; since there were no BTP waiting for us when we got home I can only assume that the young man must have complied...

We settled down, generously supplied with fruitcake and other such comestibles by the on-board assistant. Even better, at some point during the journey came the announcement that we would be arriving at Leicester around 30 minutes early; that particular service is routinely scheduled to take a long, circuitous route to arrive in Leicester at 01.45, presumably to allow routine track maintenance to be carried out on the usual line, whereas tonight we would be sticking to the normal, short route.

As a consequence, we were home by around 01.30 and in bed just before 02.00 - happily with the prospect of East Midlands Railways fruit cake for breakfast.

Historical Note

As we were entering the theatre for the first time, I paused to read the 'trigger' warning posted near to the door: "This production contains depictions of self-harm, violence, death, drug use, and substance abuse. It also includes the presence of prop firearms, the sound of gunshots, flashing lights, loud noise, haze and the use of needles"; the notice also went on to stress that the gunshots were indeed only sound effects, and that the guns used were incapable of firing bullets. I did not recall ever seeing such an explicit statement, and wondered if it was a direct consequence of the Rust shooting incident.

That in turn led me to remember a modern-dress performance of "Julius Caesar" in a Colchester theatre during the very early 1970s. The protagonists were dressed in military fatigues and, instead of daggers, carried L1A1 Self-Loading Rifles - the standard rifle of the British army in those days. These rifles were not props, but real rifles loaded with blanks (I don't know if it was significant, but Colchester was, and still is, a garrison town). As a result, when the time came for Caesar to be murdered, he was dispatched in a hail of bullets - which resulted in an equally impressive hail of spent cartridge cases flying across the stage, over the edge of the apron - to land at the feet of a number of excited young audients, who scrambled to gather them up. And you tell it to kids these days...