London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London. This is London Walks. Streets Ahead. Story time. History time.
And today, theatre time.
Because Adam’s got a question.
London is one of the great theatre cities of the world. West End, fringe, Shakespeare, musicals, tragedy, comedy, greasepaint, ghost lights and dressing-room gossip.
People cross oceans to see London theatre.
So why, Adam wants to know, don’t more of them want to walk it?
Over to Adam.
Curtain up.
[Adam piece follows…
Hello everyone, it’s Adam here interrupting your broadcast as usual to ask you a question. Why don’t you join me for a theatre walk? No, really, why don’t you? Go and have a look at the London Walks schedule. There’s an impressive array of subjects there, everything, from medicine Soho to, I don’t know, abstract impressionism and totterage and whetstone, but there’s no theatre walk on the schedule. Theatre is one of the jewels in London’s crown. Some of you come to London just to see shows. I have a number of different theatre groups who come back to see me every year. I look forward to it. Around a dozen times a year I take theatre fans, investors, practitioners, students on private tours and we all have a lovely time. Theatre goers are a very knowledgeable bunch and good company, but very few of you seem to be interested in a theatre themed walking tour on the regular London Walk schedule. Now, I think there are a number of reasons for that. Theatre seems to be historically resistant to peripherals, apart from maybe a meal, I mean dinner and a show, that’s a thing, but a show and a walking tour, well, not so much.
Now, as a side issue, dinner and a walking tour, well, that works. Guided tours with tastings and pub stops are very, very popular, but the theatre seems to be resistant to such things. So many actors spend part of their time doing other things and their transferable skills often make them great tour guides. Often, but not always, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but a number of years ago I joined a walking tour led by a moderately well-known actor. Half a dozen of us trudged along behind him on a dreach Sunday morning as he led us from anecdote to anecdote, of which he was invariably the star, most of which ended in a luckily I had the last laugh kind of a punchline. It was bleak, let me tell you, but I can handle bleak. It was worse than that. It was boring. Not every actor is an Emma Thompson or a Richard E Grant dazzling and engaging us on chat shows. Not every actor is the wonderful raconteur who finds themselves working as a London walks guide either. So maybe that puts people off, theatricals talking about themselves and ignoring the delights of some of central London’s most common worthy visuals. Tell me, maybe that puts people off. Maybe it’s because the theatre is not cheap. Let’s be frank.
So by the time you’ve bought the tickets, paid the babysitter, booked a meal, transport, parking, well, it all adds up. Another 15 or 20 pounds for a walking tour is maybe the straw that breaks the pantomime horse’s back. So boring and too expensive, difficult to argue with those, isn’t it? Though I will try. Theatre is famously the bastard art drawing as it does from all the other creative and expressive arts. So a theatre walk is immediately wide ranging from literary criticism to the evolution of acoustics in theatre architecture from ancient Greece to brutalist architecture. Throw in the architecture itself and the scene is literally set for a history of everything extravaganza. Add economics, the hows and whys of funding, gender and sexual politics, technology from gaslighting to laser projection, social history and class. Let’s talk about the price of tickets and who buys them, politics, censorship, ideas and protest. Season well with gossipy tales and legends and superstitions and it can make for a thematically rich couple of hours. It can be all of that. Or we can just have a mooch around and see some extraordinarily pretty buildings.
So many of them in such a small area. For 15 or 20 quid, five pounds less with the London Walks Discount Walkabout card, it’s the history of everything. Why don’t you join me for a theatre walk? Have I changed your mind? Do let us know.]
David again.
And Adam handed us our Word of the Day there.
Raconteur.
A raconteur is somebody who tells stories brilliantly. An entertaining teller of anecdotes.
It comes from the French raconter, to tell, to relate, to recount.
And really, that’s rather appropriate.
Theatre. Walking tours. Podcasts.
They all come down to much the same thing.
Have a story.
Know how to tell it.
Tell it.
Tell it well.
That guy who came just before me does that. And does it brilliantly. Adam Scott is the only human being I know who talks like a well written magazine article.
Into the bargain he does so off the cuff.
Ergo his coming trailing clouds of review glory.
Nuff said?
See you tomorrow.