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By the time Oliver was sitting up in bed in the kindly gentleman’s house as the flower girl sang about her sweet, red roses I was ready to bang their preppy heads together. He had moved on from meaningless banter and was now pretentiously deconstructing the production in a feeble attempt to impress her. ‘This is all a bit heavy-handed,’ he prattled, as I tried to be moved by my favourite number. ‘They are reintroducing the main theme and reinforcing the earlier characterisations.’
I fantasised about turning round and saying: ‘Look, spoddy, she’s never going to sleep with you. It doesn’t matter if you’re Jean-Paul Sartre’s long-lost son she’s way too pretty and she’s wearing the highest-neck blouse she could find in her wardrobe. So give it up and let me watch the bloody musical, which, by the way, is meant to be heavy-handed and obvious so hard-working people like me can lose themselves for a few hours and not have to think about the horrible realities of the world that is full of spoilt, opinionated little plonkers like you who ought to be put in workhouses and fed gruel until they learn some manners.’
But I didn’t. Because a new problem was developing to the right of me. A man was beginning to snore. Loudly. Possibly it was the same man who had been emitting gastric noises and dubious smells betokening excessive alcohol and fast-food consumption. In many ways it was a blessing he was asleep, but the snoring was deafening. His wife sat next to him smiling beatifically and not making any sign of disturbing him. Her expression said, ‘Ah. Let him sleep, bless him, he’s had a hell of a day.’ So, as Nancy sang ‘As Long As He Needs Me’, all I could hear was chatter, giggle, snore, chatter, giggle, shush, tut, snore.
But that wasn’t all. The children in the theatre were reaching the end of their amusement tethers and running out of whatever chemicals parents fill them with these days to make them sit in a seat. One of them had decided to distract herself by laughing very loudly just after the rest of the audience had laughed at something. This produced a mimicking operation among all the other sprogs in the Theatre Royal who began to ha-ha out of place so maliciously that I began to dread the funny bits.
After a while, you could tell that most of the audience had also been mentally reconditioned by the torture and were now stifling all displays of enjoyment in order not to provoke the domino pretend-laughing effect. Then a child began to cry. You could hear the mother trying to reason with it, but it was no use. From the desperate negotiations coming from their direction you could tell that there had been a catastrophic breakdown in the sweets- and fizzy drink-based bribery process and that, as a consequence, wailing was going to be inflicted on all of us for the remainder of the performance.
So, as Fagin was ‘Reviewing The Situation’, all I could hear was chatter, snore, HA HA! chatter, giggle, shush, tut, snore, HA HA! Waaaah! Waaaaaaaah!
I know Sartre said hell is other people but I’m sure other people never used to be this hellish.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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