The Curtain Shall Rise Again
Edinburgh, City of Culture is the home of the most famous festival in the world, founded to celebrate the end of the second world war. This is why I moved up here from drab Dunstable, a town boasting of a cathedral and a Bingo hall.
Here, in normal times, there is always a show to catch every week. There are at least half a dozen venues of international class here, art galleries, museums and theatres with, on their menus, dramas, modern and classical, operas, concertos and symphonies, musicals etc. During the festival proper, which takes place in mid-summer every year, with the exception of 2020, there are on average about 2700 shows to choose from. One is spoilt for choice.
I happen to live seven minutes from the King’s, and see the austere slightly weather-beaten building it every time I leave home. I have been a regular visitor there, as well as at the Royal Lyceum, the Traverse, the Festival Hall etc.
When the pandemic struck, with lockdown following, my withdrawal syndromes brought about palpitations every time I walked past the King’s and saw the defiant poster: THE CURTAIN SHALL RISE AGAIN.
But when?
As a theatre goer is almost always also a film fan, the closure of cinema halls was a lesser misfortune, as one could catch films on Netflix or Amazon, and in any case the TV stations like the BBC or Channel 4 have libraries of films which can be enjoyed for free. Some theatres provided free on-line productions, Scottish Opera or the New York Met also offered free access to past hits, but one craves for the frisson of the ladies in their finest, exuding a fragrant whiff of Clandestine Clara or Bewitching Yasmine as they brush past you searching for their seats, their bracelets and necklaces tinkling merrily.
More mundanely, I also yearn for my little tub of over-priced ice-cream during the interval. I rarely eat ice-cream elsewhere.
After a year and a half of cultural deprivation, normalcy is now tentatively raising its head over the parapet. Cinemas opened first, but one had to wait for mid-June before our thespians were allowed to tread the planks once more. I managed to get a ticket at the King’s on re-opening night, when a London production of A Splinter of Ice would be performed.
Obviously there would be all kinds of restrictions. Only alternate rows would be available with rules of distancing.The audience had to wear masks, have their temperatures measured etc.
It is a play based on a meeting between Graham Greene and Kim Philby, when the famous writer of The Power and the Glory went to Moscow to attend a forum organised by Gorbachev on how to make the world less dangerous. Greene needs no introduction, but perhaps one might mention that Philby was a former British Intelligence officer who defected to the Soviet Union in 1963. Greene never published any account of his encounter, so the playwright Ben Brown hypothesised about what the pair might have talked about. It was well-known that in his younger days Greene had worked for MI6, with his handler none other than the aforesaid Philby, although he had already been turned.
I was seated near the back of the theatre, but although my hearing is not perfect, I have an excellent pair of hearing aids, so I did not mind too much. Sadly when the play began I realised that whilst I heard most of what Greene, played by Oliver Ford Davies was saying, I had great difficulty hearing Philby’s responses. I expected the writer to ask about the reasons behind his treachery, what he felt about having to betray past colleagues who were eventually shot dead by the KGB, or how he felt about returning to England etc. I knew the answers, but would have liked details and clarifications. I knew thatPhilby had been a communist since his Cambridge days, I knew that he said that the people who were executed were always aware of the possibility of being killed when they joined the service, but I would have liked to hear it “from the horse’s mouth”.
I realised soon enough that the battery in one of my hearing aid had died, but there was nothing I could do. I had to extrapolate Kim Philby’s justifications.
But I had no regrets, even if no ice-cream was available. I had returned to the theatre, I had witnessed the rustling of fine silks and had breathed in exotic fragrances and heard the tintinnabulation of jewels.. The curtain hath risen.
