You sometimes see review columns, particularly with the Sunday papers, by-lined by an unfamiliar name (except to eagle-eyed regular readers who actually keep track of who’s who in the critical world), being footnoted with the declaration that the usual critic “is away”. This keeps their name in currency and suggests that they will be back. The daily papers, of course, have teams of critics; so when - as he has been for the last couple of weeks - Benedict Nightingale of The Times doesn’t appear, they don’t draw attention to this fact but you simply notice that Sam Marlowe is covering more things than usual.
Things are more confusing on the Evening Standard where, in the absence of Nicholas de Jongh, another Nick - Curtis - pops up at some of the bigger openings, instead of the “official” deputy Fiona Mountford.
All of this is by way of explaining that I am away from today to this time next week, so I will not be appearing in this spot until tomorrow week, Tuesday July 8.
My place may be taken, once or twice, by Alistair Smith and his news team, who are launching a blog of their own soon, but meanwhile are piggy-backing off this one as they did a few days ago here .
And for anyone who cares, I am heading to Gran Canaria - and no, there isn’t a theatre festival there; in fact, the reason I chose to return to the place, where I also went last year, is specifically because there is no theatre that I know of to be found on the island, so I hope to have a “detox” week! And just in case anyone spots his simultaneous absence, I’m not going with Ian Shuttleworth, who I ran into at the Bloomsbury Theatre last night at the charity concert The Lovely Russell that paid tribute to our late University pal Russell Churney, and he told me that he, too, is away from today - but he is going to Turin in Italy for what is indeed a theatre festival.
Have a great time, Ian; and see you all when I’m back!
Have a great time Mark!
I believe you can catch several live shows down at the Umbro Centre! Enjoy!