WITH BUS routes over the hills disrupted by the snow, we ended up taking a taxi to the matinee at the Theatre Royal and Opera House in Wakefield this afternoon. John Godber’s adaptation of Stan Barstow’s novel A Kind of Loving was as funny and evocative as the read-through which we attended in Ossett last summer had suggested. One of the hazards of a live performance; John Godber strolled onto the stage at the start of the production and explained that because Christine Cox who plays Vic’s mum had lost her voice he would be reading her part, while she continued in mime only (we did very briefly hear her in one scene). I’d like to see the play again and hear her speak her lines but in most scenes you could have understood her character’s emotions without any dialogue. Every live performance is different and it didn’t detract from the experience, if anything it was another way getting us to use our imaginations to draw us into the story and the lives of the characters.
In those days cigarette smoking was an everyday activity and you couldn’t evoke the late 1950s and early 60s without having the characters smoking in various situations. A silver cigarette case, a 21st birthday gift, features in the plot. But it was strange to catch a whiff of smoke indoors again after years of it being banned. Luckily it didn’t set off the alarms. It reminded me of a time when any cinema, bus (upstairs) or pub that you went in would have to varying degrees a fug of stale smoke which you’d carry it back home on your clothes. But I should explain that this was just the slightest hint of fresh smoke and we were close to the stage on row E in the stalls, so don’t let it put you off attending when the production moves on to Hull and Stoke!
Here’s a subject that most of us get a chance to draw every day, except perhaps the people who live in the old windmill further up the lane; the corner of a room.
Moving a little to the right, this jug on the hearth came from Barbara’s mum’s. I guess that it dates from the fifties but it could be slightly pre-war. It’s hand-painted with orange flowers. Marrying the curvy vase with the geometric pattern of bricks proved beyond me and I was unable to match up the proportions of the vertical and horizontal sections of the fireplace when I came to draw the bottom righthand corner of my drawing. My guess is that I drew the jug slightly larger than the bricks that I’d already drawn by the gas fire on the left.
So for my next drawing I went for something with no geometric grid. This is my A5 size art bag, a grey Mantaray bag which I most often take with me for everyday drawing, such as this afternoon at the theatre.