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5 hours ago
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At the start of the year, my wife launched a campaign for us to go to the theatre more. It bears many of the hallmarks of my 2018 campaign for us to go to the theatre more, which failed miserably after my wife pronounced it stupid. She claims not to remember this.
My wife’s campaign is hampered by her refusal to accept the kind of outlay that modern theatre-going requires. She comes into the kitchen and places her open laptop in front of me.
“Uh-oh,” I say. Her laptop screen shows a schematic representation of a partially filled London theatre, with available seats highlighted.
“The tickets are £50 each, which is ridiculous,” she says, “but what do you think of these seats?”
“What’s wrong with them?” I say.
“What do you mean?” she says.
“All the seats around them are £75,” I say. “Will I be sitting behind a pillar? Are the seats facing the wrong way or something?” I say.
“I’m not paying 150 quid to go to the theatre!” she says.
“This is your campaign, not mine!” I say.
After several fraught exchanges like this, I have two nights at the theatre in my calendar. On the first night we arrive early, but my wife cannot find the tickets on her phone.
“They were there yesterday,” she says, scrolling. Behind us, a queue is building up.
“Sometimes if you search your email … ” says the usher, patiently.
In the end, the usher has to take us aside and print our tickets manually. I feel very old.
“That was embarrassing,” my wife says as we search for our seats. “But here we are.”
“Second row?” I say.
“Yes!” she says. “Only £25.”
“But the stage is right there,” I say. My wife knows I have a particular fear of the second row, because once at the circus I was plucked from the audience by some clowns and dragged into the ring, where I was blindfolded and sported with.
“I don’t think there are any clowns in this,” my wife says.
“No, but they’ll be singing straight into my face,” I say.
“Is there going to be music?” she says.
“It’s a musical,” I say.
“How marvellous,” she says.
For our second theatre date, we emerge from the tube into a light rain.
“I’m enjoying our theatre-going lifestyle,” she says. “Are you?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Although it’s a weird thing to do instead of having dinner.”
“I know,” she says. “But this one has no interval. We’ll be out by 9.15.”
“Do you have the tickets on your phone?” I say.
“Yes, I checked,” she says. “I’m not usually that stupid.”
We cross the street and enter the theatre lobby, which is filled with other people our age, uncertainly offering their phones for inspection. But there’s also an excitement in the air that you only get from the anticipation of a live performance. Our turn comes, and my wife holds out her phone, barcode up. The usher scans it, frowns, and then scrutinises it more carefully.
“This is for a different play,” he says. “You’re in the wrong theatre.”
A little while later, in another theatre two streets away, my wife and I are taking our seats.
“If they’d let us in, I would have watched the whole thing and never known the difference,” she says.
“Until the interval came, and then you’d have been furious,” I say, sitting down. “Ah, I see.”
“What?” she says.
“Why you chose these seats,” I say. “The top half of the set is obscured by the overhang of the balcony.”
“So?” she says. “Who cares?”
“So there’s a big clock up there,” I say, craning my neck.
“Are you seriously complaining about going to a West End play,” she says, “and not being able to see the clock?” People in neighbouring seats begin to tune into our argument.
“I assume it’s of some symbolic import,” I whisper, “or it wouldn’t be there.”
“You know it’s there now, so shut up!” she says.
I know how loud my wife is prepared to get under circumstances like these, so I remain silent. Afterwards, as we rise with the rest of the audience for a standing ovation, she leans towards me.
“I see what you mean about the clock,” she says.
