To the Old Vic with MZFC. I was here last summer with Dad, our last theatre outing together. The last of too many to count. It was The Cherry Orchard. (Mme. Ranevskaya: How old you’ve grown, Fiers! Fiers: I’ve been alive a long time).
Tonight it was The Real Thing. I knew it was a cracking play but I’d forgotten just how cracking. And so many unforgettable lines most of which I now can’t remember. Virgo syntacta. Too many to count.
There are unwelcome hauntings and necessary forgettings, but revisiting Dad-filled scenes usually makes me more thoughtful than sad. On the way to the theatre that last time, walking past Waterloo, he talked about his own father, how he must have walked the same street every day to and from the office, the sacrifices he imagined my grandfather had made (a job he didn’t much like, not enough time to read and see plays) because he was absolutely clear about what he wanted: a family, well-educated children, a beautiful house.
I don’t know what my grandfather would have made of The Real Thing (he died a month before I was born and five years before it was first produced) but I wish Dad had been there tonight. Love, suffering, philosophy … and bonking. What more do you want, really?
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