A mammoth undertaking

The acronym for Time Off In Lieu is highly appropriate – one only manages to accrue it when one’s been toiling away. And, as Sam pointed out in a comment yesterday, I’ve certainly been building up a fair amount of extra hours throughout January. In fact, for the last two weeks I’ve done a full five-day week of at least 37 hours (I’m not admitting publicly to any more than that, as my boss sometimes reads this blog!), which has at least answered the question as to whether I’m ready to go back to full-time working yet. No, I’m not! I’m shattered!

So today I decided to give in to the nagging of several colleagues who think I’ve been overdoing it, by taking the day off in lieu of some of the additional hours I’ve been working. I had a lazy morning and didn’t set my alarm, though I did sneakily log on and check my email before lunch – and was caught doing so by one of the very colleagues who had told me firmly to take the day off. Drat!

There is a Noel Coward play on at Malvern Theatres at the moment, and I generally enjoy his plays. Private Lives and Design for Living are two of my favourites, but this was a new one to me – Star Quality. It’s his final play, and I hadn’t even heard of it before, so I wanted to see it. But while I’m this tired, I really don’t want to go out in the evenings, and I’m busy with friends and family this weekend so the Saturday matinée is out of the reckoning. So the only way I was going to see the play was by going to the mid-week matinée. That was an added incentive to take today off.

It wasn’t a classic Coward, and I could see why I’d not come across it before, as it isn’t performed as often as his earlier plays.  It’s definitely not in the same league as some of his other works, though the trademark Coward wit and repartee were still there. The plot was clearly drawn from his life, with him sticking firmly to subjects that he knew intimately. It was about an innocent young playwright who had written a brilliant new play, the very temperamental leading lady who was a highly demanding diva, the ruthless producer trying to pull it all together with the help of his outrageously camp boyfriend/assistant, and various sundry lesser actors/actresses all caught up in the battles between the three leading protagonists. Cue hissy fits all round.

The actors were all hamming it up – and sometimes it was difficult to tell when their character was acting hammily, and when they themselves were overcooking it.  They also stumbled over their lines a few times – and again sometimes that was deliberate but sometimes definitely not. It turns out that this is the first week of the company’s tour around the UK, but even so one does expect professional actors to be totally fluent with their lines from day one – or, in this case, day two. The scene-stealer was Lola, a small white dog who was carried around by the leading actress. She behaved impeccably, and was the only character on stage who could not be accused of over-acting!

I’m pleased I’ve seen the play, as my curiosity is now satisfied, though I don’t think I’ll bother going if I see it staged again. And it was good to have a day off as TOIL after the hard work of participating in the equipment trial. I did feel out of place though – weekday matinées are clearly the preserve of the retired – I must have been the youngest person in the audience by fifteen to twenty years!