I'm a little bit nervous about going to tonight's theatre. I've never been there before, but I've seen it. Many times, Back when I was a post-grad student, I used to walk past it all the time.
It lurked. Underground. Just off to the side of the pavement. Only a black board covered in rain-soaked flyers hinting at its existence.
I've told you before about my theory on finding fringe theatre venues when you are a bit lost. The trick is to always head in the direction that looks most likely to contain your inevitable death. The darker and more narrow the alleyway, the more likely it is to have a sixty-seater venue specialising in diverse new writers. I'm telling you. You could plot those points on a graph and get yourself a very tasty sigmoid curve going on.
And so it is with The London Theatre, luring us down beneath New Cross Road for the most nefarious purpose of all: theatre.
I should say, so it was with The London Theatre.
Because it's not called The London Theatre anymore.
Perhaps they had one too many confused tourists come in thinking they were going to get their weep on at a big-budget performance of War Horse, and decided to switch to a slightly less misleading name: The Ale Room.
Whether the theatre will live up to the promise of its new name, I guess I'm going to find out.
Soon.
I pause on the pavement and take my usual exterior photos. But they are taking forever. I tell myself it's because it's dark, and that my camera is struggling with the reflections from the street lights. But both you and I know that this is all a crock of shit. I'm dithering. Not wanting to go inside. Putting it off for as long as possible.
An old man laden down with shopping passes by and gives me a funny look.
I should get a move on, before people start thinking that I'm casing the joint.
Down the stairs I go, and through the door.
Inside is a very small corridor. Brightly lit and painted white. It doesn't look like it belongs to a theatre. It doesn't look like it belongs to anything. What it looks like, is a mistake.
Over on the wall is a small gap. More of a hole, really.
A woman peers out at me from behind it.
"Box office?" I ask doubtfully.
"Yup?" she says, confused at my confusion.
I slide over. "The surname is Smiles?"
She runs her pen down the list of names in front of her. "Yup! Enjoy," she says with a finality that suggests that our exchange is over.
Well, okay then.
I guess I just go through.
There isn't any signage, so it with some trepidation that I follow the corridor around a corner.
But it isn't a man wearing a ski mask and wielding a samurai sword waiting for me on the other side. Oh no. Instead, I find a small room, with a bar taking up one wall, and a large mirror over on the other. The space in between is rammed with a chaise longue and various other seating arrangements.
I appear to have just stepped into the smallest pub in all the world. And while the crowd over by the bar is too dense for me to actually get a good look at what's on offer, I'm sure they have a very fine selection of ales going on back there.
I don't really fancy asking the girls sharing the chaise longue whether they mind squishing up to make room for me, so I go through to the second room to investigate what's going on in there.
In here, there's a long wooden table with an equally long wooden bench, which I immediately claim as my own.
And from this angle, I can see that there's a set of dog bowls down on the floor. They're empty, but they're there. I look around for the corresponding hundry dog, but if there is the scamper of four paws going on anywhere in this place, I can't find it.
There is a poster though. Stuck up at dog-height. "Mutt Stop," it says, with an arrow pointing down at the empty bowls.
I'm not sure what to make of that.
Nor of the aeroplane seating I've just spotted over at the back of the room. There's even an oxygen mask hanging down from the ceiling.
Nice to know that we'll be looked after in the event of The Ale Room going down, I suppose.
And then I remember the empty dog bowls.
That oxygen mask probably isn't even hooked up to an air supply.
"And The London Theatre...?" asks someone, who is isn't me, but probably should have been, over at the bar. Bless them, tackling the hard-hitting questions I want to know the answer to, but am prevented from asking because of my crippling social anxiety,
"Yeah," says the guy behind the bar, with the tones of someone who has had to answer this question a lot. "Basically, The London Theatre was sold..."
I don't hear the rest of his explanation because I am immediately distracted by a group talking about the play.
"Did they tell you anything?" asks the person in the group who clearly knows everything there is to know about this work.
"It's comfort girls?" comes the tentative reply.
"Yeah," says the first person, nodding regally. "Pretty much. I saw it last night and it's... harrowing."
Oh good.
That's what I really wanted tonight. A harrowing play in a basement theatre in New Cross.
I can't claim to be surprised through. I knew full well what I was booking.
Joy Division. Not the post-punk band that features heavily on my Spotify playlists, unfortunately. But the name for the Nazi sex slaves kept to service the officers.
I did consider wearing my band t-shirt today but thought better of it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's fucking freezing. But also, perhaps more importantly, no front of houser deserves to be confronted by some who so clearly misunderstood the nature of the show they were attending. Even if they do work in a creepy basement. I can see them now, their poor little faces, all scrunched up as they try to work out how to explain the situation. Oof. Even I'm not that cruel.
The line of people at the bar shifts and I manage to catch a glimpse of a huge glass jar crammed with what looks like dog treats.
That's a relief.
The dog bowl is ready to be filled when the moment comes. Even if this audience does remain disappointingly human.
A young woman comes in and takes a seat on the bench next to me.
It sinks alarmingly under our combined weights and I brace my feet against the ground, sending up a short prayer to the theatre gods that we won't need that oxygen mask.
I check the time.
It's ten past eight. Ten whole minutes past the start time, with no sign of the house opening. There's a door in the opposite room, a black curtain and metal chain keeping us out. I presume that's the entrance to the theatre, and not just where they keep the bodies.
It's packed in here, but I can't help but think they must be stalling while they wait for latecomers to arrive.
Plenty of small venues do it. And it's not like I disapprove of the practice. But, it's now twelve whole minutes past eight. On a Monday. And I kinda want to get on with things so that I can either go home or get murdered. Either way, I want to be sleeping before midnight.
The music cuts out.
"Right guys," says a man stepping through the crowd towards the dark door. "If you want to come through!"
I'm not sure I do, but I fall in line with everyone else just the same.
Beyound the black curtain, is a small black room.
With a dead body on the ground.
A guiding hand points me towards the front row.
"Can I go in the back?" I say, keeping a careful eye on the body.
It's a woman. Lying face down on the floor. She's dressed in a shift, except so boxy it might as well be a hospital gown. It's filthy with blood and grime.
The man hesitates "There's so much action," he says, waving in the general direction of the dead body, "we're trying to fill up the front."
Oh.
I glance at the body. Her feet at bare. The soles pointed towards the front row. They look vulnerable and sad, and I really don't want to be staring right at them.
"Can I sit over there?" I say, pointing at the small group of seats on the short wall by the door.
I can, so I tuck myself into the corner.
I look around.
It's a small room. Long and quite narrow. The walls are painted black.
There are two rows of chairs, on two side of the room. With a few extra tucked under a window in the corner. I can't quite make it out, but I suspect the tech desk is on the other side of that glass.
Behind me is a clock. You don't often get those in theatres. They tend to take the casino approach, in that it's better for audiences not to know how long they've been in there.
Not that it matters. It's showing entirely the wrong time.
Below it, behind the last row of chairs, is a model railway. A small one. But even so. That's weird. Like, super weird. Like, serial killer level of weird.
I twist back in my chair and try to pretend that I've haven't even seen it.
More people come in and they fill in the seats around me.
"Go in the front, you'll see more," is the constant advice.
I watch the body down on the floor carefully. If that's an actor regulating her breathing, she is damn good at it.
Disconcertingly good.
We are definitely all about to get murdered.
Although when it comes to it, the last people through the door have to plonk themselves in the second, and only other, row.
I'm slightly jealous.
Even more so when the play starts.
Things are not going well for the woman on the floor. She's not dead, but that's hardly an upgrade given the circumstances. As the other girls in the camp discover her, sympathy is not first on their list of priorities. And it's left to the new girl to look after her.
Everyone is frightened. Terrified.
They live in a prison where three mistakes will have them taken out back and shot.
They're jealous of the Jewish Poles over at the other camp. They only have to do factory work. They don't have the constant threat of bad reports hanging over them.
There are compensations though. Stockings and sweets from one of their regulars.
That is, until he finds out that the beautiful newcomer is Jewish.
Reminding us that now, although the camps are nothing more than a tourist destination to take selfies, the crimes they perpetuated are still happening all over the world, the cast returns, stumbling in too high heels as they gyrate under the red lights.
The men in the front row squirm, embarrassed, not sure where to look.
"Can I ask everyone to go to the main room, as the actors are coming out."
We file out, past the model railway and the clock saying the wrong time, and back into the smallest pub in the world.
A queue forms at the bar. I'm not surprised. You need a drink after that.
But I make a break for it. Up the stairs and back into the cold night air, glad I got away with my life.