Notting Hill Diary

OK I’ll cut to the chase. We really enjoyed it.

There’s something about a play being performed al fresco in a major city. In London in particular there’s no such thing as silence, so any out door performance either has to contend with background sound, accept it as part of the experience or ignore it altogether. In the case of The Garden, the sounds of trains running past, people in the park behind us and the more distant hum of Scrubs Lane combined to form a sort of background music that gave the impression that the dialogue had been written around the location, which, for all I know, it had.

Not that those sounds were referred to in the play, far from it. In this post-apocalyptic world, the two main characters, Josh and Laura, have secured themselves within a walled garden designed and formerly tended to by Laura’s father, now lying dead in a makeshift grave at one end. The world outside the garden (and they really have built makeshift walls around it out of old fencing, pallets, road signs and pieces of cardboard) is one of desolation, inhabited by the odd gang of desperate youths reduced to living and behaving like animals.

The couple seem to be just coming to terms with their situation when the arrival of the Tempter changes the dynamic of their relationship between each other and to their situation.

I regret that it took me till last night to see it. This evening is their final performance an I urge you to take a look.

Little Wormwood Scrubs, Sunday August 31 2008, 8pm
Find Number One Café (1 Dalgarno Gardens W10) and walk a minute or so towards the lights across Little Wormwood Scrubs.