It's tonight and I am more excited than is good for me, the Endsleigh Salon Christmas gathering of the book group with a difference and we have been looking forward to this almost since the last one, the highlight of our year and for 2010 we are pushing the boat out very big time.
First up, the Secret Santa limit is as usual set at £1.50 for the Christmasiest giftette you can find. Then same room, same place, same time and having always threatened to have ourselves a theatrical evening and read through a play, tonight's the night. Thespians the lot of us thanks to Faber who came up with the perfect production for us when I asked if they could suggest something funny and suitable for about fifteen people. A stroke of brilliance from the drama department and their suggestion of The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett went down a storm with the salonistas.
So we will be performing to an audience of no one but ourselves from scratch, no rehearsals, nothing and it all promises to be hilarious.
Look, even Alan Bennett is looking forward to a complete massacre of one of his many masterpieces...
What could be better and more perfectly contemporaneous with our surroundings?
Imagine Georgiana's early 19th century weekend houseparties at Endsleigh Cottage, her holiday retreat deep in the Tamar Valley. Someone from the village has spent three days plumping up all the feather mattresses (yes really) the Bedford's staff have all arrived in convoy followed by the guests travelling down from London with all the latest gossip about events at Court. Surely they would have talked about George's rather embarrassing ailments, and doubtless in the very room we sit in and to the background of the very same listed wallpaper, whilst looking out of the same windows onto the same gardens...
'My dear...you should have seen him...yes...in his nightshirt they say... and the water... well we're told aubergine is the new purple... darling, I'm thinking of having the drawing room painted in that new colour from Farrow & Ball...King's Kidney.'
Anyway we have embraced the thespian challenge with much enthusiasm. A theatre company's costume department has been raided for a few wigs and frocks, the ubiquitous nightshirt will doubtless be much in evidence and we're all bringing along 'a prop' each ...watch out for a dozen chamber pots. To avoid tantrums we are drawing lots for the parts as we arrive tonight, and will probably have to play several each but we'll get around that...
Curtain up and pictures to follow of course.
Recent Comments