Thursday already, huh, and I still haven’t found time to blog our weekend in Barcelona. There are pictures, of course (and indeed here), but if it’s witty, incisive commentary that you’re after, then you’ll have to wait. Maybe this afternoon, who knows.
Last night we went to see the Australian-backpackers-in-London play, The Vegemite Tales, over at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. To anyone like me who was in their late teens in the mid 1990s, of course, and despite its long history as a studio complex, the Riverside Studios means only one thing: TFI Friday*. Sadly, the play wasn’t taking place in the cavernous studio one, and there was no sign of Shaun Ryder swearing live on Friday teatime telly, or Ocean Colour Scene wondering what happened to their career, but instead the rather smaller studio three, where just a few rows of seats backed away from the small and oddly familiar set depicting the Acton flatshare where the action takes place. The play itself has the air of a student production, but recognising many of the thinly-drawn stereotypes being portrayed on stage, I laughed a lot. Of course no one would go to see The Vegemite Tales looking for plot depth, highbrow entertainment, or well-rounded and developed characters. They go for jokes about drinking and, as a stereotypical backpacker might say, rooting. Of those, there are plenty.
The evening was only slightly marred for me by the older couple sitting in the row behind us, who, apparently lacking any kind of internal monologue, spent the entire performance explaining the jokes to themselves out loud. I can only presume that their booming cries of “oh! he’s fallen over because he’s drunk!” in between their laughter, clearly audible to the rest of the audience, and no doubt therefore the cast, must have been slightly off-putting, but if that was the case the principals did a sterling job in carrying on regardless.
* Speaking of, can it really be 10 years this Sunday since the day Blur and Oasis released Country House/Roll With It on the same day… Makes me feel old.