West End manners

Two tickets, booked over the phone, in row L of the stalls: £87.50. At the box office in the theatre’s foyer we were handed our tickets by a condescending, black-shirted woman. An unpleasantly condescending black-shirted girl at the top of the stairs demanded to see our tickets before allowing us to go any further. When I humbly showed them to her she snatched them out of my hand and crossly scrutinised them before grudgingly allowing us to proceed.

We had time, if we knocked it back, for a quick drink. In the tiny downstairs bar two more black-shirts were unhurriedly and condescendingly dispensing fantastically expensive drinks. No one in the bar was jolly or even talking much. There was no air of expectation or celebration. Everyone was standing around looking paralysed. Two plastic cups filled with lager cost £6.

Our seats were in the middle of row L and we had to squeeze past several people to get to them. These people were also semi-paralysed. They could move their knees slightly, some of them, but none was able to stand up to let us through, which would have been far easier. I greeted the man I found myself sitting next to but he was too paralysed to acknowledge it.

It was my first time at a West End play and the first play I’d been to see in years. After Mrs Rochester is about the life of Jean Rhys. The play has had rave reviews. ‘Thrillingly good theatre,’ said Time Out. ‘Total theatre,’ barked the Daily Mail. The prospect of seeing total theatre particularly excited me. It has been so long since I last saw any play anywhere I was up for anything. I was ready to laugh, sing, weep, exchange punches, throw my hat in the air, and at the end of it emerge from the Duke of York theatre a changed and chastened individual.