feeling listless

Theatre I don't go to the theatre quite as much as I should. Now that there are four or five venues in Liverpool with a constant stream of productions, most which are on for lengthy stretches, there is plenty of time for me to buy a ticket. I think part of the issue is the number of disappointing experiences I've had in the past. Overlong acts with average performances and slightly tedious stories. I tend to treat the theatre advertising up in the city with the same critical eye as a film poster - if something doesn't really catch my eye you won't get me through the doors.

But last night something presented itself which I simply couldn't miss. A few months ago as I passed the Liverpool Everyman leaflet stand I noticed an advert for Henry IV. Usually turning out for Shakespeare I checked it over to make sure it wasn't something from Northern Broadsides, who I utterly loath. It was actually Tom Stoppard's translation of Pirandello's Henry IV. I'd heard about something like this happening at the Donmar Warehouse in London with an all star cast. Moments later I realized this was that show on a national tour and that it would be turning up at The Everyman. It sounded too good to be true, even as I handed over the six pounds for the front row seat (the last one left in a sell out final performance).

I wasn't really certain what the play was about - until I sat down last night, as far as I knew it was another version of the same story Shakespeare told. But I'm a real fan of Stoppard's work (see also the screenplays for Shakespeare In Love and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), but it was the cast which was the real draw. I'd quite liked Franchesca Annis previous work, Orlando Wells from As, If was also in there and James Lance (who I'll come to later). But top of the list and on the advert in a blindfold was Ian McDiarmid. At which point I need to fess up for the uncultured sod I am. As a Star Wars fan of old, how could I pass up the opportunity of seeing Emperor Palpatine, in the flesh, so to speak?

Last night I turned up massively early as usual. I was slightly thrown as soon I trotted through the entrance to the theatre because I knew the clerk selling the programmes. Well we were acquainted. I used to chat to her at the bus stop when I was at secondary school. The one memory I have of our brief non-friendship was her spilling a plastic box full of curry she'd made in Cookery all over the road and crying. With all that flooding back (and the fact she'd grown up to look like Liv Tyler with a mass of fuzzy blonde hair) I didn't hear what she'd said about the programmes which turned out to be a photocopy of the real thing - they'd run out. It cost 20p if I wanted to make a donation. I gave her a pound coin expecting change. She looked at me oddly and I searched around and found twenty pence in shrapnel, which I swapped over. This was becoming unnecessarily complicated.

Someone announced that the auditorium was open. I trampled up the wrong stairs, then the right stairs and found myself in a completely empty room. The clerk (who I didn't know this time thank god) ripped my ticket and I went and found my seat. Although I'm used to sitting in amongst row after empty row at the cinema, here it was creepy. I irrationally wondered if I was still going to be alone when the actors arrived and I'd be sitting there like an apology for the apathy of the theatre going public. Everyone else did arrive though. The crowd was on average slightly older than I was expecting. For an age the seat next to me was empty. At the back of my male mind I hoped that some Erin Jacob lookalike looking for some help with the plot would join me. Of course I got the man who looked like a refugee from Abigail's Party (crossed with Glen Hoddle) in a dark cream shirt and brown tie. He had no lips. I wondered about that for some of the performance.

Something else would niggle me for the rest of the time. The theatre programme listed the cast's film, tv and theatre work. Everyone seemed to have been The Bill or Casualty at some point. Under Ian McDiarmid there was the expected (and abbreviated) Star Wars Episodes I, II, III, V & VI. Something was wrong. I read it again. Star Wars Episodes I, II, III, V & VI. And again. Star Wars Episodes I, II, III, V & VI. I glanced over at the utterly professional and intriguingly mock-medieval set. I glanced back at the page and read it over again. There it was. V. He wasn't in The Empire Strikes Back. It was some other bloke. Did Ian go about telling everyone that he was in a film he wasn't in - was it on his official CV that he was in it? Was it a typo? An over zealous researcher making assumptions. Or did he know something we didn't about the upcoming dvd release? Had he filmed extra scenes? Wait until I tell Chris?

I was still thinking about this as the lights went down. I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't like the last show I saw there when a school party all made ghostly oooh noises. But this wasn't the night for that. Almost immediately I realized this wasn't the play I was expecting. That day at work I'd been telling someone about going and how having been up early for work I wasn't sure I could sit through a three hour historical play with a tragic ending. Well it wasn't that. Four men run on the stage and start yacking on in contemporary English, swearing and giving a helpful primer about which Henry IV we should be expecting. It was actually a millennia old German man not the British Shakespeare model. They had visual aids in the form of human size portraits. Then I had my "It's James Lance!" moment.

James Lance is an actor who's been knock around television for some time. But over the past few years he's been around a lot more than usual. Every time I turn on the television he's there and each time I'd find myself saying: "It's James Lance!" (I think the closest film equivalent is William C Reilly who's just been in everything). It works retrospectively too. He's Daisy's boyfriend in the first series of Spaced and was one of the hotel clerks in I'm Alan Partridge. Now here he was in the flesh. I knew he was going to be there, I'd read the programme with its handy list of everything he has been in (The Upper Hand?) But as he turned his head from the shadow and I realized I just had to say under my breath ? "It's James Lance!" (I wanted to say it out loud but that would have been wrong).

A capsule of the plot which is knocking around the internet reads something like this: "An Italian nobleman falls from his horse during a pageant When he comes round, he believes he is the medieval German Emperor, King Henry IV. For twenty years he lives this illusion, but today a plot is being hatched to shock him out of this 'madness' and into the twenty-first century." It's an intriguing idea. Once Lance and his cohorts had left the stage, 'Henry IV' ex-wife and family and the doctor show up and we get the second scene which fills in the details of his mania. Or rather, in fact, all the information we already knew because someone had taken the bizarre step of printing it in a 'The Story So Far?' section of the programme. This was the moment in the night when the play sat there, the audience shuffling in its chairs. We know all this. We've read all this. Sorry Francesca, Orlando and friends but you've been upstaged by an editorial decision (I wonder if this would be another of shaving some time off Hamlet. Knock out a synopsis of the first two acts, make sure the audience has read it then cut straight into the 'To Be or Not To Be' speech).

Then Ian McDiamard turns up and he's mesmerizing. Utterly haggard and in a sack cloth he entirely convinces everyone he's mad especially when he threatens to take it off. Again his appearance wasn't entirely a surprise (more photos in the sodding programme) but with his slow talking and tight gestures it just shattered me to watch him. Then, having freaked everyone out, he shuffled back off the set.

And then stage lights went down. And the auditorium lights came up. The entire audience looked startled. They began to stare at each other wondering what to do next. They clapped. Some people looked at their watches. That had been the first part. All 35 minutes of it. No one was criticizing, probably, just surprised. It took a couple of people getting up to convince everyone it was time for ice cream. I went to the toilet and after a brief discussion with my bladder I still had time to pop downstairs for the aformentioned iced dairy treat. I almost asked the clerk whether I was wrong and McDiamard had actually been Empire but instead I commented on the brevity of the first half. She nodded needlessly apologetically. ' The second half is a bit longer.' As I headed back upstairs to the auditorium I noticed a sign with explained the play length. Another fifty-five minutes to go.

Second half. Although it isn't The Mousetrap I'm not going to give away this part of the play. It's fabulously interesting and certainly unexpected and if you do get a chance to see a performance or read it at least I would recommend. I hope you get a chance to share it with a cast as good as this. I once saw the professional Australian Netball team play against a part time team from Sri Lanka. The Ozzy's ran rings around them and offered one of the most extra-ordinarily beautiful dances I've ever seen. That's the difference between this cast and most of the casts I've watched before - it's like second nature for them and it's just extra-ordinary.

At the centre of this section is a speech from 'Henry IV' which brings together the themes of the play, explains the source of his 'madness' and sets up the final scene. As McDiamard reached his crescendo, the apex of his performance, from somewhere in the audience, the Sugarplum Fairy plays. From a mobile phone. In quadraphonic sound. And plays. And plays. It's obvious that whoever's phone it is doesn't want to admit to it like (like they've farted) and are hoping it will go away. Ever the professional Ian stops acting mid-sentence and we wait. No one is laughing. Eventually a young woman, all eyes on her, reaches into her bag, mortified. And the play continues. Sometimes hearing the clerk telling people to turn their phones off a hundred times as people walk in isn't enough.

I knew how Ian felt because I was plagued by miniature distractions all the way through. The pensioner just off to the side who kept repeating the funnier jokes, the legs of the no-lipped man sitting next to me knocking together now and then and the mint guzzler behind me. She had a packet of Trebor Extra-Strong mints in her handbag. Ritually, ever five minutes she would unclip her hand bag, click, pull out the mints, rip open the top of the packet, slosh one in her mouth, wrap the mints back up and then put them back in her bag, clicking it shut. Why not just keep them out. WHY ARE YOU MAKING SO MUCH NOISE?!?!?

Then the play ended. It felt that sudden. There was flurry of activity on stage, then some of the calm which usually follows. I checked my watch as subtly as I could and decided there was a good twenty minutes to go. Brief exchange between James and Ian and it was over. Lights down. Same moment of puzzlement from the audience as had happened in the interval, then lights up and masses of applause. I gave James Lance a thumbs up. I think he saw me. It was the last night and I thought someone should tell him how good they had all actually been.

So there we have the Donmar Warehouse's production of Tom Stoppard's translation of Pirandello's Henry IV. Patient. Exciting. And gratifyingly brief.