It's behind you!

January 12, 2020

We're in the dregs of the year now.

Christmas is over, and we've all turned into walking zombies as we wait for the year to run out.

Me too, by the way. I managed to get out of London for a few days, and coming back has felt like being plunged into cloudy ditch water.

At least I know where I'm going. A return visit to Harrow, to get into the main bit of the Harrow Arts Centre after visiting the studio space in June. This time I don't make the mistake of walking through the gardens, instead nipping past the Morrisons and aiming myself to where I remember the front door to be.

I must be going in the right direction because there's a huge banner for the show I'm seeing strung up next to the road.

Aladdin.

It looks very... ummm.

I mean, it's not just me, is it? Like, I know I'm a lefty liberal and all that. But this isn't just me being all PC is it?

And it's not like we're in, I don't know, rural Oxfordshire or something.

We're in Harrow.

Last time I was here I was literally the only white person in the audience.

And now they've gone and cast a white Aladdin.

That doesn't seem right to me.

I hurry over the crossing and make my way past the huge sundial.

With the light dimming fast, the tall stone walls of the main building look very dramatic. The sort of building where you can expect to find a first wife tearing up the attic.

I step through the arched doorway and make my way into the foyer, ignoring the sign for the box office. I know it's a tricksy sign which only points towards a locked door. I keep on going until I reach the corridor. An usher is talking to a family. He's wearing a Santa hat.

Christmas still be going strong in Harrow.

Round the corner, I find the actual box office. A room which looks for all the world like I should be making a dentist appointment at the counter.

"The surname's Smiles?" I say to the lady behind the counter, trying hard not to worry about the last time I flossed.

She dives for the ticket box and starts flicking through the letter tabs.

"Sorry," she says when her search reaches the embarrassing 2.3 second mark.

"There are a lot of Ss... Ah! There you are!" She stares at the ticket. "Do you have the reference number? It doesn't have your postcode."

That's strange. I booked online. I would have thought that the postcode was attached to my order, but never mind. I pull out my phone and find the confirmation email. It doesn't take long. I only booked this morning.

"Is it the order number?" I ask, spotting the string of numbers and letters up near the top.

She says that it is, so I read it out to her. All of it.

"Yup," she says, as I finish up. She hands me the ticket.

Back in the corridor, a father waits patiently as his little girl examines the rack of flyers for this afternoon's performance of Aladdin.

"That's not Jasmine!" she announces suddenly, flapping the flyer in front of her father's face. "Jasmine has black hair!"

Now, while I would usually roll my eyes at this Disneyfication of faerie-tales, she's Princess Badroulbadour in the 'original' story, she's right. Jasmine or Badroulbadour should probably have black hair.

The little girl dips her own black-haired head and stares at the blonde princess, the one panto heroine who should probably look, well, just like the little girl holding the flyer.

I keep on going.

There's a gallery just off the foyer that I'd like to have a look at.

It's filled with portraits.

And the vestiges of pantos past. Broken flashy toys nestle up to discarded flyers on the ledges. A memory of the earlier matinee.

I go outside.

Families make their way over in dribs and drabs. The children bouncing around in excitement.

Behind me, I hear a strange tearing sound. Like fabric ripping.

A family stops, hovering near the entrance as they wait for the way to clear.

Someone is bending over, applying tape to the ground. Twenty minutes before a performance starts. Primetime for people wanting to enter the building.

Building Services people never rest. Even when they probably should.

Floor thoroughly stuck, and way clear, I go back in. There's no use putting it off any more. I've got to see this damn panto.

I follow the signs for seats numbered 13 to 23.

Down a corridor, and towards the door.

"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls," comes a voice over the sound system. "Welcome to the Harrow Arts Centre. Please take your seats, because the performance will start in just under fifteen minutes. Enjoy the show!"

Yeah, yeah. I'm going. I'm going.

I'm not going. I'm standing in the corridor. Dithering.

It may be my last panto of the year, but I'm not feeling the joy. Even with Slade banging out of the speakers.

But it's no use being a grim-faced arse with kids around. You just go to grit your teeth, and pretend to enjoy the damn panto.

The ticket checker looks happy. It's her last panto too. The last performance of the run. And she's grinning.

"Row S!" she says, looking at my ticket. "You're just there, darling." She points up the side aisle and I go in.

And this is it. Elliot Hall.

Quite the place.

High windows are blocked off by thick curtains. Wood panelling surrounds us and carved arches are almost hidden behind the heavy lighting rig.

Over the other side is a dark portrait. I can't make it out. But it seems to be of a rather stern looking man.

I climb up the stairs towards my row. Near the back. Because this is panto after all.

I count down the chairs until I reach mine. Or at least, the one that should be mine. As there appears to be someone sitting in it right now.

"Hi?" I say, to the person who is in what I am fairly confident is meant to be my seat. "Are you S14?"

He pulls out a pile of tickets and paws through them. "No. I'm S11 to S13," he says, before turning around to see the number written on the back of his seat.

"I'm in the wrong seat," he announces cheerfully.

Yes he is.

He gets up and plonks himself down in the free seat next to him. "No I'm not!"

His wife looks over and laughs. "Are you in the wrong seat?” she giggles.

"Not anymore!"

Glad we got that sorted. It would have been awful if I couldn't get a seat in the final show of this run and had to go home...

A small child is coming through, clutching a booster seat against his chest which is almost as big as him.

I struggle to my feet to let him past.

"You have to say excuse me!" says his seat-stealing dad.

"Ex'coos me," whispers the small child, scooting past to return his booster to the usher by the door.

He may be small, but he's too much of a big boy for such props.

It's then I realise I'm missing my own prop.

The usher on the door may have a stack of booster seats to hand out, but she seems to be lacking on the programme-front. In fact, I don't remember seeing programmes for sale anywhere. And looking around this audience, no one else has either.

That's the second panto of the run that hasn't offered me my quota of papery goodness. And the second of the larger outer-London affairs that I've been to.

That must surely not be a coincidence.

On either side of the auditorium, the doors close. I check my phone. It's 4.27pm.

They don't believe in latecomers at the Harrow Arts Centre.

"What time does it startttt?!" cries the small boy now returned from his booster seat adventure.

Dad checks the time. "4.30," he says. "Now."

But we have a few more minutes to wait before the house lights come down and the villain comes out.

Here we go.

My last panto of the marathon. Last panto of the year. And if I have anything to say about it, the last panto of my life.

"What's up crew?" calls out Wishy Washy, who is apparently a real character in this story.

"What's up Wishy?" we call back, exactly as instructed.

But it's not enough.

It's never enough.

We have to do it again. Louder.

"WHAT'S UP CREW?"

"WHAT'S UP WISHY?"

Still not good enough. Someone is not playing along, and Wishy Washy is determined to find them out. He splits the room in half, with a hand drawing a zig-zagging line down the middle of the auditorium.

"WHAT'S UP CREW?" screams Wishy.

"WHAT'S UP WISHY?" scream the other side of the room.

Wishy bounces over to my side."WHAT'S UP CREW?" screams Wishy.

"WHAT'S UP WISHY?"

He's found he problem. It's in the first three rows.

"WHAT'S UP CREW?"

"WHAT'S UP WISHY!?"

He's found the culprit now. It's a man in the front row.

He's called Rob.

Rob has to stand up. Turn around. And when Wishy Washy does the call, Rob has to reply all by himself.

He does well. But it doesn't end there for him.,

The Dame has got her hands on that name and she's not afraid to use it. Every flirtatious joke is directed towards Rob in the front row, with the shrugged message that if you sit in the front row at a panto, you're asking for it.

In all fairness to them, this lot are taking the brunt of the jokes. Taking the piss out of their own lines with an exhausted roll of the eyes every time the audience fails to react to a terrible joke.

A Super Soaker chase and Haribo-throw later, it's the interval.

Kids skitter around, pushing themselves through the rows in a reenactment of Aladdin's run around the auditorium that took place minutes before.

The children next to me return with some new found friends, who they proudly introduce to their parents.

One pair return bearing ice cream.

A single, solitary, tub.

"We got ice cream for you and grandad," they announce to their mother. "To share. So maybe you should sit next to each other?"

Mum laughs. "Did you? Maybe grandad should eat half and then pass it over?"

But the pair aren't having it, and seats are rearranged so that mum and grandad can sit next to each other and share the ice cream.

The visiting kids return to their seats, and soon it's time for act two.

Now I've been to so many damn pantos, I'm finding myself a connoisseur of all the classic elements.

Harrow's update of the Ghost Bench scene has us shouting "Behind you," about a bandage-wrapped Egyptian mummy on the rampage. That works well.

The choice of Jingle Bells as the singalong works slightly less well.

Especially when it the repetitions start to resemble a hearing test for the cast, with the room split in half once again.

Even poor Rob is picked on to sing, but it was just a joke. "Your face!" laugh the cast as Rob, no-doubt, wills murder on them all.

Finally, finally, we get to the end. The ensemble rushes off stage to fetch bouquets for the main cast members, leading to much confusion in the ranks as they pass them around.

Something tells me those flowers aren't going to make it home.

This cast is straight off to the pub, and won't be coming out until they the memories of panto are far behind them.

Absolutely Harrowing

June 17, 2019

I've lived in London for over ten years now. Closing in on a dozen, now that I think about it. And I've been a theatre-fan for a good number of those. So, it's amazing to me how many theatres I haven't been to yet, and plain haven't even heard of, or likely would have heard of, without the push of the marathon.

When I get to one of these new-to-me venues, I have a lot of questions that need answering. What type of work do they programme? What are the audiences like? Do they provide freesheets? You know, that sort of stuff.

It's not often my first question is: how do I get in.

I'm standing outside the Harrow Arts Centre. It's a nice building. Very nice. Red brick. Old. Surrounded by gardens. Very pretty.

There's a little enclave outside the door, with wooden benches set into the brick walls. Very cosy. The sort of place you could imagine sheltering from the rain at a church fete and falling for a naice young man sporting a woolly jumper and a stutter.

The door, however, is dark. There's no sign of life inside. There's no sign of a sign.

I'm beginning to worry that I might have got the wrong building, and that I've been traipsing all over the gardens of some company away day centre, and any encounter with a young man in a woolly jumper would be closely followed by a radio call to security and possibly some dogs being released in my direction.

But no, there's the banner up by the road advertising a solitary matinee performance of Coppelia. This is def the right place. Just possibly, the wrong door.

I decide to have a walk around the building. See if anyone else is having this problem.

Somewhere a car door slams, and then a second later, a couple emerge from behind a hedge, hurry across a flagstoned courtyard and disappear through an automatic door.

Well, I might as well go after them then.

Engraved in the stone after the door, it says The B.G. Elliott Hall. I don't know who B.G. Elliott is, or why The was carved with a different font to the rest of the message, and I really hope I'm not going to find out. I walk over slowly, fully expecting a B.G. Elliot to come marching out and order me off his property. Possibly while wearing a woolly jumper. But no one does. Instead, I find myself in some sort of antechamber. There's another door in here. And another sign above it. This one says: Harrow Arts Centre.

Thank goodness for that.

Inside it finally, finally, begins to look like an arts centre. There are flyers everwhere. And posters. And roller banners. There's even a sign for the Box Office, with an arrow pointing to... a closed door.

I look at the door.

It does look very definitely closed. The type of closed that does not appreciate being opened.

Okay then. Perhaps I don't need the box office. The pre-show email hadn't mentioned e-tickets or anything of the sort, but then it also hadn't given any advice on transportation other than for car drivers, and also misspelt the word queues ("ques"), so perhaps that email isn't the best crutch to lean on right now.

I press on, further into the building, turn left, and see a queue (or possibly 'que') of people coming out of a door, a door that, if my mental geography hasn't let me down, should be to the box office.

There's a sign on the door. "Public Notice," it says. "The Box Office opening hours are Monday - Friday 10am - 5pm." It's well past 5pm now, but there is a show on tonight, so I imagine they are making an exception.

A few minutes later, I'm at the front of the queue.

"The surname's Smiles?"

"Can I have your order number?" says the lady behind the desk.

"Umm... yes?" I say, pulling out my phone. I don't think I've ever been asked that question before at box office. Not unless there was a problem, or I was asking for something unreasonable, like a ticket exchange.

I find my confirmation email and recite the order number, and she types it in. Soon the ticket machine is puttering out my ticket. She gives it a good wiggle and a tug. It did not want to come out. Probably because the ticket stick was put in the wrong way round. Or at least, I presume the logo isn't supposed to be upside down. Not that it matters much. With the logo positioned on the ticket's stub, it'll be torn off soon enough, leaving nothing but a plain white, unbranded piece of card. The shame of its upsidedowness lost to the recycling bin.

"Just the one?" asks the box office lady, giving the ticket a once over before handing it to me.

"Yes... just the one." I didn't even try to convince my friends to come to this one. Bless them, they do try. But Harrow is an Overground journey too far for even the strongest of friendships.

"Where am I heading?" I ask.

I don't know what prompted me to ask that. I don't usually. Perhaps I've encountered too many closed doors on this trip to have faith I'll find the right one. Or maybe I just want to make it really clear that I'm the loner who doesn't belong here to the box office lady.

She blinks at me in surprise.

"Err," she says, as if she's never been asked this question before, because, presumably, simply everyone knows where the Studio theatre at Harrow Arts Centre is, and what is this person that she is now having to deal with? A person who comes to the theatre, by herself, and doesn't even know where it is? She's definitely not paid enough for this, and she'll be making a note so that she can bring it up in her next one-to-one. "Head out of this building," she starts, pointing back out the door.

I'm sorry, what the what? Outside?

She sees the alarm on my face and presses on. "Go left from the car park and you'll see a sign for the studio theatre. The medical centre will be the opposite."

"Right," I say weakly. "Thank you."

Bloody hell. I'm glad I asked.

I stop outside in the corridor to quickly make a note of what she said. More for my own use than the blog. "Left. Car park. Sign. Medical centre," I mutter to myself as I battle against the auto correct to type it out.

From inside the box office I can hear a very loud customer talking very quickly. "Can't find my email, but can I buy a ticket?"

"Sorry, it's all sold out."

Blimey, I would never even have thought of that. Buying a new ticket because I can't find the confirmation email from my last one. No wonder the show is sold out if that's how the people of Harrow sort things out. Rebuying tickets because they can't figure out the search functionality on their emails. Oh well, at least it's generating some income for the arts, I suppose.

I go outside. I'm not entirely sure where the car park is, but I follow the building around, back to where I had heard the car door slam earlier, and yes. Here it is. And as promised, there's a sign. I walk down the road to get a better look at it. I'm not wearing my glasses and can't quite read it.

It lists all the delights of the Harrow Arts Centre: Elliot Hall, Studio Theatre, Medical Centre, Swimming Pool, Cafe and Bar. With arrows all pointing in the same direction. That's convenient.

I turn left and am instantly lost.

There's hundreds of buildings here. Fancy brick ones. Whitewashed ones. Ones that look like are falling apart. Ones that look like they housed pigs in another life. And others that probably have a sweat-shop in them right now.

But down a path lined with some of the more dispiriting examples, I spy a crisp white sign, gleaming out from all that peeling paint-work. "HAC Studio Theatre."

I'd found it.

And so has everyone else. There's a line coming right out the door.

It rather looks like I've stumbled on the hit show of Harrow.

I hear the ticket checker before seeing him. He's bantering away with everyone coming through the door.

"You'll be having the stay out here with me," he laughs to a group of women, before letting loose a beaming smile on the next person in the queue.

We shuffle our way forwards into the foyer. There's a little desk in here. But it's not being used. And doesn't appear to have been used since 2004. There's a TV resting on top. It has a built in VHS player.

The ticket checker chats away to everyone in turn, seeming unperturbed by this historical artefact resting on the desk not three feet away from him.

"That's two," he asks the man in front of me in the queue. He looks closer at the print out. "Just one?" he says, looking up at me.

The man in front confirms that it is just one.

The ticket checker takes my ticket. "Thank you, madam," he says, handing it back. No banter. Barely even a glance.

Right then. I go into the studio. It's dark, long and low, and makes me think of an industrial chicken coop.

Ridgid rows of chairs are packed in.

This should be my cue to head to the front, to claim my spot at the end of the third row, as is my preference in unallocated seats. But instead, I turn the other way, heading for the first raised row, just behind the door. When the choice is between proximity and a rake, always choose the rake. That is my free and personal advice to you.

It's a bit tight in here. I had to clamber in around the chair in front so as so to disturb the nice ladies at the end of the row. There's a free seat between us, but that is doing nothing to save my legs.

I may only be a shade over 5'3" but that's not short enough for the squishy legroom here in the studio. I really hope no one sits in front of me, as they are going to end up with a knee in their back.

As soon as I have this thought, someone plonks themselves down in the seat in front, only to discover my knee in their back.

He jerks his seat back, but when he finds no relief, he looks behind him to discover the cause of this obstruction, only to discover my apologetic face.

I try to rearrange myself, but a big group has just come in and the ticket checker is trying to find seats for them all. The nice ladies at the end of my row move down with a smile. "Someone can sit on the end there," one says.

The doors are closing. There's still five minutes today but we are locked in together in the darkness.

We all sit and awkwardly look our host for the evening, Pariah Khan, sat on a table, his legs swinging, his head bowed as he reads a book.

A young woman a few rows ahead of me looks back and holds my gaze for a second too long before turning back around. It was a look of curiosity and recognition. We're the only two white girls in the audience. The only two white people.

The ticket checker comes back in to let people through and give a countdown to the tech person. Four minutes to go.

Three minutes.

Two.

Khan begins. He's come to Britain to explore what this country has to offer. To travel about. fall in love, and watch football at a reasonable hour.

"This is really good," says the man sitting in front of me, leaning towards his companion.

I'm glad he's got something decent to distract him from the knee in his back.

A minute later, a phone rings. First quietly, but louder as its owner rummages through her bag in search of the disastrous noise machine.

Khan stops, his face a still mask as we all collectively hold our breaths, waiting for the phone to stop ringing.

"Did you remember to turn your phone off?" he asks, with a sly side-long glance as the ringing eventually comes to a stop.

Unfortunately, no number of side-long glances will stop the sounds of the radio bagging through from the foyer, as messages are relayed through the hundreds of buildings that make up the Harrow Arts Centre.

But Khan presses on, taking us on a tour of this strange country of ours. Even when a woman in the front row decides to stand up, put her coat on, make her way to the door, and let it slam on her way out.

At the end, applause still going, Khan uses the flipchart that has been his companion and time marker throughout the performance to display the credits.

The clapping quietens as we all watch him flip pages.

"You can carry on applauding!" he says, showing us the director's name (Eduardo Gama).

We dutifully do so, but it's not the same. Just think how much better it would have been if they'd been a freesheet.