The cogs of society are, of course, oiled by rumour and gossip, from Westminster to the West End, but politicians – “so greasy and oily/they’re served with a doily”, according to Sweeney Todd’s meat pie recipe – have an excuse: it’s a world that thrives on paranoia and destabilising your opponents by means foul as well as fair.
But to whose benefit, exactly, is it to release theatrical production dates or facts early that turn out to be wrong? I’ve written here before about the reliability, or otherwise, of internet sources of information, and it turns out the dates that I was referring to about The Sound of Music – that the publisher of assured me, in writing, that they had “written – official – confirmation” of, are, in fact, wrong. Whereas they were published as opening on December 5 following previews from November 24, it now turns out that opening night is November 14, following previews from November 3.
Repeated enquiries with the press agent on this occasion had revealed that he didn’t know the earlier dates himself. And for a very good reason, he insisted, as they had not been decided yet. But someone, somewhere decided to turn it into a scoop; and it turns out, a pretty worthless one. Now a correction has been published, claiming the dates have been brought forward; but since they were never announced in the first place, that’s tantamount to accusing the producers of changing their minds even though they’d never made their minds up in the first place.
Sometimes, though, you mustn’t believe yourself, either: just because something is always a particular way, you mustn’t assume that is always the case. Last night I went to Bromley’s Churchill Theatre to see the tour of Grumpy Old Women – an amazing phenomenon, since the men in the audience were outnumbered roughly 10 to 1 – and had built my timetable around the usual Bromley schedule of 7.45pm curtain-ups. As the train pulled in at 7.28pm, I even thought we had ten minutes to stop at the local chippie en route to the theatre. Luckily, when we did, they had the Churchill brochure on the counter – which I picked up, on instinct, to check whether I was indeed right, and it turned out that for the one-nighters, their curtain up is in fact 7.30pm! We fled out of the chippie, and got to the theatre at 7.34pm. In fact, the curtain went up late around 7.40pm, so we weren’t late after all. But it was a close-run thing. And very nearly turned me into a very grumpy old man indeed!
