Back to the blood tubs: the amazing spectacle of Charlie Peace

When I was a child, I was fascinated by a particular kind of penny-in-the-slot machine - the sort you found in the arcade at the end of the pier, if the pier's attractions were particularly run down.  

In those days pennies were really big copper coins - bigger than any coin in use today.  If you held them tightly in your hand and your hand sweated, you would acquire a green stain on your palm.

The coins were old. too.  Particularly sought after were "bun pennies" with their image of the young Queen Victoria, with her hair in a bun - though it was sometimes hard to make her out on the battered and faded coins.  But those were coins that had been shiny new in Charlie Peace's era, though he was ambitious for more wealth than a mere penny represented.

I don't know if the penny-in-the-slot machines I loved were around in Charlie Peace's lifetime but I suspect some, at least, represented the moment of his death.  Public executions might have ended in Britain, and parents no longer gave copies of the Newgate Calendar to their children as a dreadful warning, but end-of-the-pier machines showed, as well as haunted houses and "what the butler saw," a variety of executions, including the French guillotine and the British "long drop."  While they were bleakly macabre, they also offered the final episode of an unknown story - something to spark the imagination.

Early in Michael Eaton's new play about the Victorian burglar, murderer and folk-hero Charlie Peace, there is just such a tableau.  It's part of an entertainment that harks back to Victorian and pre-Victorian popular culture.  It doesn't belong with the sedate cup-and-saucer dramas intended for upper-middle-class audiences " or the slightly later problem play which barely questioned middle-class morality.  This is part music-hall entertainment, with its master of ceremonies, music and spectacle, and part the kind of melodrama that might have stemmed from one of the "penny gaffs" or "blood tubs" that came into being when "legitimate theatre" was restricted to England's few patent houses.  There are also elements of broadside ballads in some of the songs while either side of the set are huge playbills in the Victorian mode.

The great achievement of the play and its excellent cast is that it demonstrates that this kind of spectacle, so often sneered at by theatrical critics, still works for an audience, and works exceptionally well.  While most performances in this mode are either pantomimes, which have to work for a family audience, or slightly superior mockeries of the genre, Charlie Peace engages with the mode and celebrates it.  At the time, I was too caught up in the plot to analyse my response but I recall laughing, gasping, sitting on the edge of my seat and admiring the craft and dexterity of the actors.  And while the play is not about careful characterization or anguished doubt, Peter Duncan was entirely credible as the kind of friendly villain who could be charming, anguished, angry or ingratiating depending on the company in which he found himself.

There is something serious going on too.  The play led me, at any rate, to consider why I find law-breakers like Charlie so engaging and why apparent villains have such a hold on the English popular imagination.  Plainly class is an element but it's not just that.  I wonder if Charlie Peace has a similar hold over the imagination of people who always expect the law to protect their own interests. 

But you need to see the play for yourself.  It's at Nottingham Playhouse until 19th October and then it moves to the Belgrade Theatre at Coventry.   I don't know if it's touring any more widely but if I was running a theatre capable of staging it, I'd try to get this play with this cast if at all possible.  Get to see it if you can. 

I would like to praise the director but unfortunately I mislaid my programme - or perhaps Charlie snitched it (it's the sort of thing he might have done) so I don't know who the director is.  The sets, by graphic artist Eddie Campbell, are marvellous and the stage technicians have evidently worked hard, to very good effect.   


    

Bringing home the Ashes

They made me play cricket at school. Looking back, I approve. Cricket was widely seen as a boys' game and it was good to have the opportunity. I didn't even mind too much at the time.

Like every sport, cricket had its dangers. There was the hard ball hurtling in my direction and the scorn of the games mistress - and fellow players - every time I ducked or missed a catch. But I soon developed a strategy that made the game a source of pleasure. I made sure I had a book in my pocket and volunteered to field on the boundary line. Very few teenage players - boys or girls - can hit a cricket ball to the boundary and there was a convenient hedge nearby. I and my book would adjourn to the other side of the hedge where I would read in the sunshine. Books I enjoyed at the time included Dorothy L. Sayers' Murder Must Advertise. I quite like fictional cricket matches.

This probably doesn't make me the ideal audience for Michael Pinchbeck's new play, The Ashes, which I saw at its final preview performance - it runs till late September. I wasn't really in the mood for theatre when I headed to Nottingham Playhouse. It didn't help that the lovely Cast bar, where, as a Backstage Pass member I have a discount, told me there was a 45-minute wait for food - even cold nibbles. It was only 50 minutes to curtain up. I settled down with a beer and surveyed the crowds. They were mainly male, which had a definite and unusual advantage - no queue for the ladies' loo.

It looks as though The Ashes will be a popular play. Harold Larwood, the cricketer at its centre was a Nottinghamshire lad who played for the county. The crowds in the bar included more cricketers and cricket fans than I usually observe at the theatre - but perhaps I was just more aware of conversations about cricket. It could be a tricky audience, I reflected, picking out flaws in details or cricketing stance. Looking at the length of the two parts of the play, I was further concerned. The first half was a mere 45 minutes and the second 75 - against the usual logic which makes the second act shorter than the first. I was full of doubts as I settled down to watch.

I already knew something of the subject of the play. The Bodyline tour, as the 1932-3 Ashes tour of Australia is known, is still discussed, often in relation to class as well as sporting ethics. In the 1930s the distinction between "gentlemen" (upper-class amateurs) and "players" (working-class professionals) remained an important one, although the national team drew from both groups. Discussions of the bodyline strategy, in which batsmen risked serious injury from fast bowling, often focus on the contrast between the public-school and Oxford-educated team captain, Douglas Jardine, and the two Nottinghamshire ex-miners, Harold Larwood and Bill Voce. This, as a friend pointed out, set up the risk that the play would be worthy and obvious. I settled in my seat without great hopes.

Within the first five minutes I realised that the play was going to work. It doesn't aim at naturalism - just as well, since the Playhouse stage isn't big enough for a cricket pitch - so all the actors, including the leads, took other roles as required, changing both attitudes and accents. However the actors convinced within each role they took. The cricketers in the audience plainly approved too. They were quickly receptive to references I found obscure and their appreciative laughter made the theatre a comfortable place. It was plain that the play was not going to be dully worthy.

Pinchbeck's play places the emphasis precisely where it needs to be: on character and events. There are ethical dilemmas but they are explored through the complex characters at the centre of the drama: Harold Larwood, played by Karl Haynes and Douglas Jardine played by Jamie de Courcey. The performances in these roles were stunning, even within an excellent ensemble cast. When I think of Larwood and Jardine in future, I suspect they'll always be embodied by Hayes' slight and determined figure and de Courcey's humourless intensity. Class mattered, of course, but these characters weren't cardboard cut-outs but people for whom class was one part of their complex individual experiences. The only slight problem came from the inevitable passivity of Lois Larwood (Sarah Churm) whose role was largely limited to staying in Mansfield, following the match at the cinema and expressing an admiration for Gracie Fields. But her final speech conveyed a depth of feeling that went far beyond the words she was given to say.

As a viewer, I was caught up in the English team's determination to win at all costs. This tour came, after all, in the wake of the Great War and members of the team must have spent part of their youth anticipating battle for king and country. But I winced when I saw film footage from the tour, showing the impact of bodyline (or "leg theory") bowling on the batsmen. And the longer part of the play didn't seem long at all as I was riveted by the tensions within the story.

I emerged from the play with a much greater respect for cricketers. As I stood in the bus queue afterwards, some of the cricketers from the audience were still discussing the ethics of bodyline as well as explaining theories of bowling or small aspects of the story omitted from the play. And that, I think, is how it should be.


Please note that the play has an undeservedly short run - you need to see it before 17th September. And apologies for my long absence from blogging. I was simply tired and needed a break. I'm back now.

Berkoff and Dionysos

Last week, I realised I'd never seen Sophocles' King Oedipus on stage.

Few people would be surprised by that, but I was. These days I don't get to the theatre as often as I'd like but I still think of myself as a theatre-goer. In the past, I've sought out obscure productions of Greek plays – in Greek as well as in English – because of the challenge they pose to today's theatre.

I'm not an expert but, when I struggled through two happy years to achieve a weak pass in Greek A-level, I supplemented my tussles with verbs and syntax with reading everything I could find on Greek history and culture. According to the curriculum, my school didn't offer Greek. Greek, like writing Latin verse, tended to be the preserve of boys' grammar and public schools. But somehow I wangled my way into Greek A-level, which was taught intensively from scratch in the Latin teacher's spare time. I've been grateful to her ever since. I was an unpromising prospect with nothing except a desire to learn to recommend me. There must have been considerable doubt whether I would pass. But the teacher – her name was Miss Blench – did her very best for me, setting plenty of work and urging me to read as much as I could. I think there were four shelves of books about Ancient and Classical Greece in the school library. I probably read every one.

I don't suppose any school would let a pupil take that risk nowadays, what with league tables and so on. But I'm more proud of the grade D I attained (a clear pass!) than any other academic achievement.

My teenage passion for things Greek has subsided now but I still turn to Greek texts from time to time – often in translation with the original Greek beside me, if I can find it, so that I can have some idea of the sound and the way meaning is made. But heading to Steven Berkoff's production of Oedipus at Nottingham Playhouse, I couldn't find a Greek text. I had to make do with a few extracts in The Oxford Book of Greek Verse, which were far too difficult for me.

Instead I thought of the problems posed by staging Greek tragedy today. It's never going to be the same for us as the Greeks. A director could offer a singing, dancing chorus and principle actors in masks and elevated shoes, but it wouldn't have the same effect. The Greeks were as familiar with that convention as we are with drawing-room comedies or Shakespeare framed by a proscenium arch.

Nor does theatre have the same role in society. These days there's a debate about the purpose of theatre and whether it should be funded. There's always someone to say it's superfluous and that, if people want theatre, they should pay for it, however high the prices and however limited their means. The defenders of theatre talk of heritage and culture. They even act like economists and produce charts showing how much money theatres bring into their towns and cities. Meanwhile the government imposes cuts which are made at one remove, leaving the lovers of theatre and custodians of culture to decide whose potential will be stifled and whose lives they will impoverish

None of that would have made sense in Athens, when Sophocles' play was first produced at the Great Dionysia. Performing plays and going to the theatre was a religious duty. Citizens attended to honour the god Dionysos. There was a fund to ensure that those who couldn't afford the tickets could still join the audience. And it was an honour to be the wealthy citizen who sponsored a playwright's work.

As I remember – it's a long time since I worked through those books – the Great Dionysia was also a theatrical competition. A small jury would vote for the best set of plays (three from each playwright and a satyr play). However not all the votes were counted, giving the god a chance to intervene. And the plays were all on familiar topics so the question was not what the story was but always how it was told – and how it honoured the god - in the vast Athenian auditorium.

There was no way Steve Berkoff could offer that experience for an audience seeing a single play from the comfortable seats of the Playhouse. I did wonder whether he would try to bring the audience to a state of catharsis – the state of purification from emotions which King Oedipus achieves, according to Aristotle. But I'm not convinced such a state is possible today. We see the world differently.

One of the main differences is the set of questions we can't help asking about Oedipus: what did he do wrong? what could he have done differently? does he deserve his punishment? But these aren't, I think, the questions Sophocles' original audience would have askes. (These aren't my own ideas. I'm following classical scholars. I don't have my books to hand but I believe I encountered the arguments in essays by E.R. Dodds and Erich Segal.)

Sophocles' first audience believed in curses and prophecies. They probably didn't think about it all the time but the question could even enter politics. When things were going badly, citizens would mutter that there was a curse on the family of Pericles and Alcibiades – not because they thought there must be but because the curse was a matter of historical fact. Electing a leader from a cursed family could cause problems for the city as a whole.

The baby Oedipus was no more than three days old when the prophecy was pronounced – and it derived from a curse on his family. From the time of his birth it was inevitable that he would kill his father and marry his mother. The Christian idea of sin doesn't come into it because his fate was always inescapable. So is the punishment he and his family must endure for his actions – not because Oedipus has committed any conscious or willed wrong but because father-murder and incest are punished by divine law, even if they occur accidentally. What the play shows is not the way we should live but the way the power of the gods and prophecies work out. If it has a moral – and I think it does – it is simply that humans should believe in oracles and honour the gods.

I can see those views at a distance and understand logically that people held them but, like most people, I'm too wrapped up in a world that believes in personal guilt, human responsibility and the innocence of babies to feel what such views mean. Although people today often suffer for the actions of their rulers, few would find it just that a whole city should suffer from plague because its king has acted in the way the gods or Fate ordained. Because our understanding of the world has changed, ideas like this don't work in the theatre of today. Actors need characters they can inhabit and audiences need to sense a world that isn't too distant from their own.

In Steven Berkoff's production (after Oedipus rather than an exact translation) it's surprising how little this difference matters and how much of Sophocles' play survives. Berkoff may have created an Oedipus who is something of a mobster or mafioso rather than a king but Stephen Merrells' arrogant boss fits the play – he is the sort of man who, unfortunately for him, is bound to attract the notice of the gods.

I admired Louise Jameson's Jocasta too. She seemed softer than I would have expected – sympathetic and believable. I don't shudder in the way the original audience would have done when she repeatedly denies the power of oracles – to the watching Athenians this was the kind of blasphemy that could threaten the city as well as the speaker. For a modern audience this is more understandable. She's a mother who has lost her child and her husband and whose love for Oedipus is, in consequence, tender and protective.

What interested me above all was how the play itself would work. After all, telling a well-known story can mean there's little suspense. But just as children like to repeat the same suspense-filled journey, grown-ups can be interested in how a familiar story is told – and knowing the ending doesn't necessarily spoil the excitement.

I was surprised how well the tension builds. As members of the audience we observe the unfolding of events, alert to every little irony and clue. When Oedipus promises, with an oath as binding as an oracle, that he will punish the murderer of Laius with exile, we already know that he is promising to punish himself. And when we're told of his similarity to Laius, we know this is because he is Laius's son. Yet the inevitability enthralls the audience, as I suppose it enthralls the audience of a slasher-movie. And I found that, whereas I would watch Hamlet, which I've seen many times, for how the play is staged and acted, with Oedipus most of my attentions was given to the way in which the story unfolds. I suppose in that respect the modern audience is very like the Greek audience, who would have seen a number of plays on the Oedipus theme.

There were two points where I was less certain of the production, though this may suggest I'm something of a purist when it comes to Greek theatre. While at times the stylised mime of the chorus worked well – when performing clear emotions or recognizable actions, as, for instance, when a member of the ensemble suddenly became a horseback messenger – at other times I found the movements too vague in intent, though performed with complete conviction. But what a pleasure it was to see such a range of faces. Each chorus-member was both part of an ensemble and a human individual, whose face could at times be transformed into the fixed pain and astonishment of a Greek tragedian's mask.

For me one of the highlights of Greek or French classical drama is the messenger's speech when an actor tells the story of horrors that happen offstage. I'll never forget Robert Edison in the Phedre of Racine, holding a full theatre still and on edge as his mellifluous voice painted a succession of cruel catastrophes. The horror that occurs in my imagination is always more terrible than any that can be shown on stage.

I was unhappy, therefore, at the decision to show Jocasta's suicide and Oedipus's eye-gouging on stage. Even a simple dumb-show distracts from the power of language to shock. The conclusion did allow a moment that moved me deeply: when Oedipus gently embraced and kissed his dead mother-wife. But that gentleness somehow made the ending less bleak and powerful. The play moved me but not to the extent that I felt purged and purified by having seen it. Good as the production was, it offered me no catharsis.

But then, I didn't go to Nottingham Playhouse to worship Dionysos. I'm not sure I believe in him.

Problems in Pangbourne

Many years ago, I went to the National Theatre to see Coriolanus. It was a preview, so I had no idea what to expect from the production. Unusually, I was going with friends who had taken the opportunity to book low-priced “stage seats,” with no idea what this might mean.

We arrived in our smart work clothes and were ushered onto the stage. At once our role became clear. I remember Peter declaring loudly, “I can't be mob in this tie” as he undid his tie and stuffed it in his suit pocket.

We were indeed cast as mob. From where we sat, stood or at times, were herded round the stage, we fell into the role quite easily. As Coriolanus, Ian McKellen unleashed his venomous contempt in our direction. At times we felt vulnerable, particularly when swords were unsheathed. But we were happy to join in the calls of our leaders: “The people are the city.” From where we stood or sat it seemed like a call for justice and democracy – and Coriolanus hated it.

The rest of the audience hated it too. The people in stalls and circle of the Olivier Theatre were on Coriolanus's side. Often, when you're on a stage, the emotions of the audience are palpable. It was like that then, even though we weren't really members of the cast. I felt a great wave of anger and hatred rolling towards us from the body of the auditorium. We were in a Shakespeare play, we were audience but we were getting it wrong – this play wasn't intended for the angry, demanding mob.

I was reminded of that experience as I reflected on my reaction to Amy's View at Nottingham Playhouse. I've been hesitant about describing this because the play provided so much that I want from the theatre. It was excellently acted and I don't think it could have been better directed. Everything was right from the pictures on the walls of the set to the piano music between scenes - I wish I knew what it was. It was a play by a living playwright who did his best to take women's lives seriously. At its centre were questions about culture, politics and economics.

And yet … though I laughed in all the right places, the play didn't speak to me. Most of the theatre-goers were having a lovely time. I felt like an intruder from the wrong background. I didn't belong in the posh house in Pangbourne where most of the debates took place. Had I been there, I'd have been working in the pub (offstage) or hanging out with the cleaners and gardeners who must have been employed to keep the rich people's rooms in pristine order. I started wondering where ordinary people lived and realised that, for the playwright and most of the audience, the people on stage were ordinary.

There was something odd about the on-stage discussions. The play involves long and often funny debates about the merits of theatre (good) versus film and TV (bad). It's plain which side the audience is supposed to be on. The representative of modernity is a dodgy young man who doesn't go to the theatre. He's a bastard in both the literal and metaphorical sense and this is plainly supposed undermine the views he expresses. He's also the only character on stage with a regional accent.

The young man insists theatre is dead and that the masses – or the mob – are on his side. Theatre-goers are hardly likely to agree. But at times the argument and scenario are so heavily skewed against him that I wanted to offer my support. In that setting I might even have cheered Kelvin McKenzie or Rupert Murdoch. I'd have felt I had more in common with them than the secure and unworried defenders of theatre.

Of course, worries do intrude. Since the days of Aeschylus drama has demanded reversals of fortune. But I was untouched by the characters' miseries. Certainly bad things happened to them but it was always plain that someone would provide food, home and subsistence. Even massive catastrophe doesn't mean destitution. The sort of disasters that threaten most people are a good deal worse than that.

On one level it was a good evening at the theatre, if a strangely isolating one. I always like watching good acting and laughing at well-timed jokes. But it's odd to feel alienated by a defence of live theatre, which I've loved for as long as I can remember. I wanted something wilder, more connected with a world I recognize as mine – perhaps something as angry as the plays of Peter Barnes or Edward Bond. I'd have liked excitement – the kind of confused physical and intellectual response I had to a student production of Sergeant Musgrave's Dance when the gun was trained on the audience. Perhaps a production of Blasted would have reminded me of the strengths of live theatre. I don't know. Productions of Sarah Kane have yet to reach the East Midlands.

Watching Amy's View gave me a sense of exclusion. Theatre tickets used to say on the back “The management reserves the right to refuse admission.” Sometimes, when I was young, I would worry that a theatrical management would tell me to go away because I didn't belong – that I'd dressed wrong, didn't understand the ways of theatre-goers, that theatres weren't meant for working-class children like me. Of course it never happened. By now I know I look and sound as if I belong.

The ever-hospitable staff at Nottingham Playhouse took my money, helped me choose the best available seat at the price I selected and treated me like a guest. The actors performed well in the play which David Hare wrote. It was the play itself which refused me admission.

I may be a theatre-lover but I know my place. I'm mob.

Georges and dragons

I missed St. George's Day itself. I was too busy with work to head to Leicester Market for the traditional dragon-slaying and distribution of red roses. But Leicester has never been content with small festivals. St. George's Day has spilled over to become a three-day event, involving more than any individual could fit into the time available.

I scanned the programme in amazement. Everyone was getting in on the act. There were morris dances, a maypole, church services and a beer festival. There was face-painting and dragon-making and a choice between Shakespeare, poetry readings outdoors and prose and poetry indoors. Some of the events had a rather slight connection to St. George, unless there's something I missed - there wasn't any flamenco dancing in any version of the story I knew. But why not? It all sounded like great fun. I determined to attend on Saturday and take lots of pictures.

Plans don't always work. My back, still painful after my fall on the ice in January, was hurting more than usual. I left home late with my camera in my bag. Photogenic sights abounded. I saw the bunting first - I wonder if the council will leave it up for the World Cup. Two minutes later I spotted my first St George, accompanied by his maiden. They posed for a photo and smiled. I framed the picture, clicked - and the resulting image was flooded with light. I thought I'd messed up the settings, tried to check them, wished I had an instruction book. I tried new settings, more pictures. No luck - and they would have been such good pictures too. The ones that get away are always the best.

I listened to some readings. They were good but, worried about the camera and other matters, I could give then only half my concentration. I wriggled in my seat, trying to make my back comfortable. I failed and headed out into the sun.

Leicester was flooded with St. Georges, all much better-looking than the slightly sad specimen escorting Nick Griffin at the BNP manifesto launch. (I wonder if Nick Griffin knows how multi-cultural Leicester celebrates St. George's Day - and how pathetic his own attempt looks by comparison.) I think there was even a St. George on stilts but I was too far away to check the identification. I was happily impressed by the George and Dragon cupcakes.

I headed to the station via my favourite camera shop. The staff inspected my camera, checked the programming and eventually diagnosed the problem - serious and expensive. "It would cost a lot to mend it," one said. They didn't need to spell it out - I knew it would cost more than the camera itself. "Which is your cheapest camera?" I asked, and got out my credit card.

By the time I reached Nottingham St. George's Day celebrations were winding down - they had lasted a mere two days. Here England's special days involved William Booth and Feargus O'Connor as well as more markets, Georges and dragons. Shoppers, children, Goths and football supporters ambled in the sunny Market Square.

I didn't pause for long. My destination was the Playhouse and a play about another George. I read Julian Barnes' novel Arthur and George a couple of years ago and was curious to see what sort of play David Edgar would make of it. It didn't seem a natural choice for a drama - the novel goes back and forth in time and deals with complex questions of law and evidence. But David Edgar's a confident, experienced playwright who knows how to move characters and keep the audience interested. He's not to reshape a novel to ensure it works as a play.

In a way, Arthur and George is a play about Englishness, although Edgar doesn't labour the point. George Edalji, a vicar's son and solicitor, sees himself as an Englishman. His passions are railways and English law - he likes to see the world as an orderly place. Chris Nayak, in an entirely convincing performance, brought out the character's slight strangeness which the play relates in part to a protective and defensive family and in part to George's extreme short-sightedness and consequent focus on details.

At the beginning of the 20th century George takes his isolated life and its oddities for granted. When he comes under suspicion for horrific crimes - maiming horses and leaving them to bleed to death - he limits his consideration of the case to matters of evidence, law and courtroom practice. He never mentions the virulent racial hatred that condemns him because he is the product of a mixed marriage - his father is Indian and his mother Scottish. Eventually, when his life has been shattered, he turns for help to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur - famous, admired but also an outsider - looks at the larger picture and is determined to secure justice, compensation and public vindication for George. Adrian Lukis's performance shows the bluff, hearty persona Arthur presents to the world but there's also a hint of vulnerability - Arthur is uneasy with his fame and the complications of his own personal life. George's case provides Arthur with an escape from guilt and worry as well as a cause to fight. One of the enjoyable aspects of the play is the way in which George and Arthur, who, with little in common, treat each other with careful respect and do their best to see one another's point of view.

It's an delightful play. The two major characters are complex and layered. Actors in the other roles take the opportunity to hint at complexity on occasion. While racism is uncovered - the kind of racism that was written into British text books at the time - it's not the only factor working against George. Ideas of manliness play part and so do networks of unspoken loyalty. George is a very convenient scapegoat.

Watching the play was entirely pleasurable. It helped that pain-killers, combined with rather good cider, banished my back-pain for a a few hours. Comfortable seats at the Playhouse helped too.

George Edalji probably contributed more to Britain than the historical St. George - or even the legendary dragon-killer. George Edlaji's case - and Arthur's defence of George - was a major factor in creating the Court of Appeal.

Glamour at the Playhouse

I don't know if it was the snow, the credit crunch or the need for a preview audience, but a message reached me on Facebook offering £5 tickets for previews of Glamour, the new play by Stephen Lowe.

These days Stephen Lowe is one of Nottingham's literary celebrities. His Brian Clough play, Old Big 'Ead in the Spirit of the Man, was one of the most hilarious and joyful productions I've ever attended. I'll never forget the Nottingham Forest and Derby fans thronging the theatre for the first preview nor the ecstatic response I - and the whole audience - gave to the stage Clough's rendition of "My Way" in which he was accompanied by roller-skating angels. Only at the theatre or sports ground is such sublime collective enthusiasm possible.

Glamour takes an episode from Stephen Lowe's Nottingham youth as its starting point. The schoolboy Lowe was working at a small Nottingham cinema, the Moulin Rouge, where his tasks included booking foreign films, which were cheaper than new releases. "The continent" - especially Paris - came to embody the idea of romance, sex and glamour The young Stephen Lowe, represented by Jimmy Potter (not Porter) in the play, decided on a career as a film-maker. Undeterred by his reliance on a handheld 8mm camera, he settled on his first project: a short blue movie (literally blue since he dyed the film in the bath).

This is the starting point of the play, which takes place behind the screen at the now-lost Moulin Rouge. Six actors are on stage. There's the young would-be film-maker and his girlfriend, who are torn between his desire for art, sexual experience and Lawrentian ideals and her Catholic upbringing (coupled with embarrassment about her small breasts). There's the chirpy, comic cinema-owner who has fled to Nottingham from London and his alluring, uneasy wife. There's the would-be singer who offers a different kind of glamour - he once appeared on Top of the Pops. And there's a quiet Irishman, working on a building site while writing poetry and talking of Joycean epiphanies. Off-stage - in the streets and the auditorium of the cinema we never see - are guests invited to the premiere of young Jimmy's film and a group of Irish building workers.

The play is a comedy but, as with all good comedies, there's loss at the heart of it. Almost all the characters yearn for a life that's unattainable and dream of being somewhere else, where life is filled with glamour. Only Jimmy has much hope of fulfilling his dreams through the miraculous transformation (in 1966) of university. The rest live through projecting their desires on other people, seeing them as the embodiments of the glamour they desire rather than recognizing them as fully human. The older characters are more seduced by glamour than the young who still have the chance that luck will improve their lives - perhaps their greater chance of luck means the young can afford their forays into realism.

I watched Stephen Lowe and the director, Bill Alexander, in the bar before the play. When it was over, I saw them in the back row of the stalls, with a sheaf of notes. There may be rewrites before the press night on Tuesday or the staging and timing may be changed. There was a little dip in attention for about ten minutes of Act One although the audience was willing the play to succeed. But such things often happen at previews - that's what previews are for. And the cast was brilliant, especially Michael Socha as the young Jimmy Potter and Melissa Simpson as his girlfriend. (They had real Nottingham accents too instead of the usual TV travesty.)

The play as a whole was a delight: lots of laughs but, in the end, real emotion and a sense that the play had raised important questions, as good plays do. And for someone of my generation, there were delightful and embarrassing recollections of the 1960s - before the play began, I realised I could sing along to "Michele - my girl" (even the verse in French) while in the interval I was embarrassed by my familiarity with the Babycham ad. I'll be urging my friends to go.

Theatre days

It's a few years since I last went to the pantomime.

I love panto. One of my best theatre memories is of a trip with friends to the Players Theatre under the arches off Villiers Street on the London Embankment. There I sat with a beer beside me, join in the traditional chorus of "Oh! the fairies!" and saw a recreation of an early 19th century panto, before the arrival of principal boy or pantomime dame.

Our local panto is usually a sell-out. Some years I'd be too late to get tickets and queue, hopefully, for returns. It's not a starry panto but features excellent panto actors who return year after year and girls from local dance schools as a chorus. And it's written by someone who knows panto-history, has a love of bad jokes and leaves plenty of space for improvisation.

This year, I received an email offering me two tickets for the price of one in the new year. Of course, I'm wondering if I can find a friend who would like to go with me. Many people I know despise panto. They accuse it of vulgarity, bad jokes and misogyny. But the vulgarity and bad jokes are the point. As for misogyny - occasionally there's a dame who has a pretty strange idea of women. But a show in which a woman takes the male romantic lead while a man in a frock wears the most extravagant costumes in the show hardly endorses sexual stereotypes. Moreover, a show in which the audience is encouraged to take part, shouting "Look behind you!", "Oh no it isn't!" and, in Nottingham, "Ey up, me duck!", is a risky piece of theatre owing much to the old traditions of carnival with its exuberant role-reversals.

I'd really like to go to the panto. But the two-for-one offer alarms me. It seems another sign of the recession. Family and group visits to the panto must be down - in times of hardship theatre, the arts and so many other pleasures seem like a luxury that can be cut.

When I'm poor, which happens from time to time, theatre and the arts see me through. My mother taught me that, if you have a choice between dinner and a theatre ticket, the theatre ticket is the better investment because the pleasure lasts longer. You can always take a slab of bread and eat it while standing in the gallery. And my mother taught me the pleasures of free museums and art galleries - places to wander and let the imagination roam. A carefully-chosen postcard of a painting can be carried around for months, used as a bookmark and finally, in an act of generosity, sent to a friend.

But how many theatre companies and art galleries will survive the economic crisis? What will become of the musicians who give so much pleasure? And, for people whose pleasures lie elsewhere, how will the sports grounds be maintained? Will there be bus trips that take us to the countryside and will the paths, moors and beaches be maintained? What will happen to those historic sites that have been labelled "national (or international) heritage"? Somehow, in the disasters ahead, I hope we find time to preserve not just life itself but the things that, for many of us, make life worthwhile. And I hope we learn to share these pleasures more generously.

The watchers and the watched

It began as a lecture - about psychology. Against the backdrop of a clinic the doctor and his assistant introduced themselves and then, with smug authority, brought on their patient, pyjama-clad and shambling.

Of course, we knew it was a play. This was Nottingham Playhouse. We had tickets for Vertigo - not the Hitchcock film but the French novel on which it was based, adapted for the stage by Jonathan Holloway. Butfrom the start our role as audience was uneasy - we were spectators of a disturbed man who seemed unaware of our presence.

Gradually we were absorbed into the story ... then, from time to time, jolted out of it. Ben Keaton, as Roger the patient, moved from semi-consciousness into apparent alertness as he enacted his past. But in all this he was under hypnosis - paraded before us by the doctor treating him. For most of the first act he remained in pyjamas while appearing suave and confident; the doctor and nurse moved in and out of other roles - to show us how things were. At times the doctor would return his patient to sleep so that he could underline a point for us, the viewers.

It's a tale of fear and obsession that begins in Paris in 1940. German troops threaten inavsion. Roger's outward confidence masks guilt and uncertainty; he's an ex-policeman whose fear of heights led to the death of a colleague. He takes on the job of following Medeleine, the delicate young wife of a rich older man. First he just watches and begins to idealise her. Then he finds himself forced into an action which makes her acknowledge his presence. As he spends more time with Madeleine, Roger's obsession deepens. Who is exerting power, the doctor asks us, the watcher or the watched?

The story twists unexpectedly, leaps past the Occupation and introduces an uneasy post-war France. Sympathies switch. We remain uneasy as watchers but we remain transfixed because there is so much we need to know.

I don't want to give away the plot. We went to the first preview. The press night is next Tuesday. But it's gripping theatre - and as sinister and shocking as any film noir. From my second-row seat I felt like a voyeur - failing to intervene because I wanted to know how the story would end.

I saw the play with my teenage children - a last family outing before my daughter departs for university. I'm glad to see that Nottingham Playhouse still has the cheap tickets and special offers that make a family outing possible. The Playhouse wasn't quite full but the audience was rapt and thrilled. And I'm glad to report that my daughter - an enthusiastic theatre-goer - reckons it one of the best productions she's ever seen.



Note: The play is a reworking of a touring production by Red Shift. I note that the smaller production reached the Wyeside in Builth Wells earlier this year, giving audiences in Powys a chance to see outstanding theatre. It's a shame that the long-term future of the Wyeside - an outstanding small arts centre - remains uncertain. I hope the campaign to save the Wyeside secures its long-term future.