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No country for old women: Old Ladies - at Finborough Theatre

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The day after seeing The Old Ladies at the Finborough Theatre , I was describing the play to someone in great detail: about three old ladies who lived in a rickety house in southern England in 1935. Based on Hugh Walpole’s novel and adapted by Rodney Ackland, it is the sort of story with enough believability, humour and mild thriller to stick in your mind. Perhaps it is the lure of this dark, forboding tale of a life without money, to be alone and to be old, that makes you feel attracted to this poverty porn. But then again, given the state of the world, the cost of living, an ageing population, or just the fact that it’s a dog-eat-dog world, it might as well be an every little old lady-for-herself, too. It’s a well-acted and staged piece that moves at a brisk pace, so there isn’t much time to think about it too much. And in the intimate (or should that be claustrophobic?) space of the Finborough, there’s nowhere to avert your eyes. Even if you wanted to.  The scene is a grim Cathe...

Scenes from Clapham Common 14:29 - Toast Australia Festival. A chance to sample some foine woines from Australia (and plenty of crap ones) and queue for everything. This is the food queue. An hour later I had a burger... Half an hour again after that I ran into a friend who pointed out that I had some ketchup on the side of my mouth. So that explained the look I got in the Wolf Blass tent...

Interestingly bottles of wine were not on sale in most places after the New Zealanders reportedly trashed the place when it was Toast NZ yesterday...

On the plus side there were plenty of broaaad Austrayian accents around, and Kath and Kim made a guest appearance. Along with the real thing there were plenty of Kath & Kim lookalikes... Some were intending to dress like this as well... Ricky Ponting was there too. Posted by Hello

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