Last week I and a friend had arranged to go to London to the theatre to see play Daughter of Time. It was a new play and based on the book by Josephine Tey which I read many moons ago as a teenager. She had written several mystery books featuring Inspector Grant and in this particular title we find him laid up in hospital with a broken leg. He is bored and fed up and chances upon a picture of Richard III who he feels has “a rather nice face”. At the time the book was written (and the play was set in the fifties) most of us who are interested in Shakespeare had been brought up on the portrayal of Richard III by Laurence Olivier with a hunchback and an evil dark wig and sneer on his face. I accepted this characterisation until I was studying the Bard at school and it dawned on me that Will was writing plays to please a Tudor audience, including Queen Elizabeth I. Of course, we all know that Henry VII came to the throne by defeating Richard and, as he was the present Queen’s grandad, it was highly unlikely that Will wanted to offend his patron.
Then in the sixties a historical writer, Rosemary Jarman, wrote a novel about Richard and my view of him began to change. A few years back his grave was discovered in a car park in Leicester which caused much excitement and interest in him revived. I think by now many people think he did NOT kill the Princes in the Tower so the book by Josephine Tey was well ahead of its time.
So Inspector Grant decides to alleviate his boredom by applying his detection skills to working out a solution and this is the brunt of the book and the play. Of course, the play had to have additional material else it would all be exposition. So we had a side plot of an actress who was in love with him and Grant too obtuse to notice so she pretends to be engaged to another fellow actor to make him jealous. This actor just happened to be playing Richard III in a production so every now and then we had a cameo of his portrayal, a la Olivier.
I am not sure the play as a whole quite worked but I found it very intriguing. I wondered how many would turn up to a matinee performance on a Wednesday but, in fact, the theatre was three quarters full and the audience was attentive.
https://charingcrosstheatre.co.uk/theatre/the-daughter-of-time
An interesting day which was made even more interesting by the fact that the Tube drivers were on strike so the traffic was appalling, the taxis were full and were barely moving so my friend and I, we belong to a walking group, decided to walk from Liverpool Street station to Charing Cross. A highly optimistic google map put the journey at about 40 minutes walk but I am assuming it was meant for those with youthful limbs. We set off and it took about 55 mins with a break for coffee. After the play, we had assumed that perhaps the traffic would be better. Alas no. It was just as bad only this time it was quite scary as the homegoing commuters took to bikes and it was like the Tour de France along the Embankment. Some of the two wheeled population had scant regard for pedestrians so we had to really watch our step. I had no desire to be mowed down by a Lycra clad lunatic.
Got home, put on pjs. tea and bed.
I slept very well indeed….
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