Personal connections in the theatre….

So on Friday night I looked in on them on both sides of the coffee counter fence - in the morning, Ian made me my usual coffee; and in the evening, I saw him and his coffee bar business partner Andrew on the Union’s tiny stage.

I worry sometimes about seeing people I have come to know this well in another guise; especially when, in seeing them doing their (other) job, I am called upon to do mine. I’m here as a critic now, not customer, and I am going to have to have an opinion. Sometimes I think it might be better not to go at all, so I don’t have to feel thus challenged (and possibly thereafter, forever compromised).

But it turns out I needn’t have worried. Ian Groombridge - even though disguised by a hair piece that made him look considerably different to the Ian I know so well - and Andrew Obenay are as good as actors as they are at making fresh coffee. Which, if you know the coffee at the Union, is quite a compliment.

I wish I could be as complimentary about the play, a self-consciously creepy exercise in the tensions of jealousy between two neighbouring couples of a London tower block. But Ben De Wynter’s production teases out those tensions with considerable skill, and relieved my own of the fears I had of seeing the coffee boys in action. (I have another personal connection with the director, too - his dad, Robert De Wynter, was once my boss, when in my first post-University job I worked at West End advertising agency Dewynters that bears the family name. And Robert was there on Friday night, too!)

Then Saturday I went to the last night of Spring Awakening at Lyric Hammersmith. This was a purely personal visit - I’d bought four tickets to be there, and took my brother and his wife, too - not a working one, and it was a pure pleasure to surrender myself to this glorious musical and not to have to write about it (except that I am doing so now!).

Often final performances are bittersweet affairs - but this one was pure celebration. This was only the end of the first chapter of the show’s life - this coming weekend it resumes at the West End’s Novello Theatre. And if Saturday’s performance is any guide, it’s going to take the town by storm, because this is a show that speaks (and sings) to everyone. Yes, the youth audience seems to particularly love it - it’s about them, after all - but it’s not just for them. My brother, who is in his early fifties, loved it as much as I did; and my friend Michael, who is into his 70s, was there on Saturday night, too - seeing it for the second time. We’ve all been to (some of) the places the show describes.

On the way out, I ran into producer Matthew Byam Shaw, who is part of the producing contingent who are taking it into town. Even with the kind of reaction we’d just seen, he’s nervous: the show is going to have to find and build its audience in the West End fast. The marketing push to date was for its Hammersmith run; now, with only a week’s gap before it moves into town, it’s got to start it all over again.

But then this is a show that works mainly by word-of-mouth; and word-of-mouth works faster now than it ever did before. Young audiences twitter and Facebook and blog; never mind what critics say, they talk to each other quicker and louder than any critic can. And they’ve been documented to believe their peers far more than any single newspaper source, as I’ve previously blogged here about film students. And they’re being actively encouraged to support the show in a way that won’t break the bank, either - there’s a youth ticket, for those aged 15-19, that gives access to the best available seats for just £20 (or £15 at Wednesday matinees).

Finally, from a young show to an unashamed old timer: time and theatrical fashion may have moved on from Simon Gray during his own lifetime that sadly ended last year, but last night his career was celebrated in a one-night showcase at the Comedy Theatre of extracts from his TV work (screened on a large screen, invisible from the rear of the stalls where I was sitting, and two flatscreen monitors, bizarrely situated on either side of the stage but too far away to see clearly, either) and theatrical repertoire (performed live, sometimes by the actors, like Jasper Britton and Toby Stephens for the extract from Japes, or Edward Fox for one from Quatermaine’s Terms, that had actually originated the plays).

Extracts don’t always work - they lack proper context - but there was some irresistible stuff here, including Michael Gambon at his sublime best in an extract from Otherwise Engaged; but the best bits were the readings from Gray’s various diaries by participants that included Celia Imrie, Kevin McNally, John Standing, Rik Mayall, Simon Ward, Richard O’Callaghan and Peter Bowles. I’ve long felt that Gray’s diaries - particularly those based around particular productions - are amongst the best books about theatrical process I know. Tomorrow, of course, Chichester are opening a stage version of his penultimate personal diary, The last Cigarette, with three actors playing different aspects of the writer. Last night’s sneak preview of this approach filled me with a particular dread. This may be another case of course of extracts not working out of context; and we’ll discover tomorrow if it does in full.

But meanwhile, given whose life and premature death we had come to celebrate, it was ironic and also oddly touching to see how many people took to the street outside the theatre in the interval to do something that Gray himself would have wholeheartedly applauded: to light a fag.