Surprises in Stratford

This meant taking the 10.40am train, a small price to pay for a small price, especially in these days of the portable office aka the wi-fi’d laptop. And there’s nothing like a bargain to put you in a good mood. With the rising cost of petrol and the increasing amount of concessions and advance booking rates, travelling by train is generally much better value than driving. And of course you can read and work on the train.

I’ve stayed in just about every hotel in Stratford over the years but this time I checked into a B&B just a stone’s throw from the Swan’s Nest along the Shipston Road. I like this little part of town, just across Clopton Bridge (which has been decorated with new illuminated strips), next to the Boat House and the Butterfly Farm.

And I like Stratford at this time of year, too, although it’s deadly quiet and the mist is rising like a damp blanket from the river. The wonderful Christmas illuminations are in place – switching on in two weeks time – and the new theatre looks permanent at last.

I like the new main auditorium a lot, and I like the refurbished Swan, too. But going into the latter is not all that different now from going into the former. The Swan is the RST writ slightly smaller. We congregated in the interval in the long corridor that connects the two, and there’s something wrong there: it has an underlit, cheerless air, and the roped off reception area was slightly depressing.

Not as depressing, mind you, as the refurbished Arden Hotel across the way (the property belongs to the RSC) which now resembles a jumped-up bistro bar with chrome extras. At least the silly man in the top hat has deserted his post by the front door.

The Dirty Duck, further along Waterside, has had a make-over, too. Manager Sam Jackson says that business has been healthy over the summer and autumn, but the place was almost completely empty after the curtain came down. First night jollity is a thing of the distant past, and evenings there with Jack Tinker (who died fifteen years ago) even more so. Ou sont les neiges d’Anton Chekhov indeed?

Over breakfast, my new landlady regaled me with her views on the play and details of her family. Turns out she’s a retired schoolmistress with no sign of a husband but much anecdotal evidence of their marriage: five grown-up children and eleven grandchildren.

I asked, as tactfully as I could, had her husband passed away? “Oh no,” she replied, “he went off with a great big Jamaican man seventeen years ago.” I nearly choked on my cornflakes, but she’s obviously got over the shock.

“But after ten years, the black man left him for a younger model, so he went on-line and hooked up with a Filippino. He went out there and rang me up to say he was bringing this new chap home and that they were going to get married. And they’re very happy.”

I was still interested, obviously, as she switched horses to discuss the RSC. “Well,” she said, serving up the eggs and bacon, “it helps me to understand all that about civil partnerships and Gregory Doran, doesn’t it?”

I’d entered an Alan Bennett world of subversive suburbanism. Stratford really is a very quiet and pleasant little market town. But who knows what’s going on behind those net curtains? And who needs the theatre to liven things up?

I bought a paper from my regular newsagent on the corner of Sheep Street, right across from the theatre. My Asian friend was amazed that I’d come to Stratford to see a play, as if that was the last thing one would do there.

“Mind you,” he said, “you’d be very surprised at how much difference the theatre makes to our lives here.” Not that he’d ever been there himself, of course. And there was I thinking all along that the RSC was at the nub and hub of everyone’s everyday business, concern and activity in Stratford-upon-Avon. Apparently not.