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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 a creepy London flat. One of the things that happens when you sign up to various websites offering flatshares is that people email you photos of hideous rooms like this one. It was in N4 and it looks like bathroom tiles covered in gold paint with Ikea blue lights and grandma's old bed (with perhaps her sheets too).

Incidentally as I was in Australia for two months some people have noted that I had flattened my vowells considerably. So much so that when I was talking about gayshare they thought I was saying geisha. I said to them not to worry, I was working on my novel Memoirs of a Gayshare. Posted by Picasa

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