The season is well under way and audiences are pouring into Theatre by the Lake. They arrive early, wander around exhibitions on the first and second floors (and would whoever bought that lovely painting by Michael Bennett before I could open my wallet please bring it back), buy their programmes, order their drinks and take their seats. Then comes the interval: drinks are drunk; ice creams slurped. The two-minute bell rings and at this point foyers and bars empty as everyone heads for the loos.
The rush is prompted by that universal syndrome known as theatre toilet paranoia. "Gotta go, gotta go!" The fear of not being able to last through the second half of whatever tragedy, comedy or comical, tragical history is on stage is very real. The embarrassment of asking 28 people in row H to stand up while he or she in need shuffles past is too much to contemplate. For some sufferers, this condition can manifest itself as a game: can I leave my visit to the last possible minute and still take my seat in the auditorium as the lights begin to dim?
All this is enough to drive a house manager to tear his or her hair. Perhaps instead of giving a simple announcement about taking your seats, stage managers should say: "Look, if you need a wee, don't leave it to the last minute. We're all ready to start and we don't want to hang about waiting for you lot otherwise we'll miss last orders."
The condition is clearly related to concert hall cough paranoia, which prompts music lovers to wait to until the closing bars of the slow movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony (or any major work you care to think of) before unleashing a barrage of bronchial exploration loud enough to drown the percussion in a Mahler apotheosis. The collective fear of never being able to cough again appears overpowering. Sorry: ought to get back to the point; if there is one. Theatre by The Lake has now mounted four plays in three weeks and by the end of July will have added another three to the repertory.
What other theatre in Britain hits that level of productivity in so short a time? By August you will be able to come to Keswick and see all seven shows in a week. You could knock off Scafell Pike, Helvellyn, Blencathra and the Fairfield Horseshoe during the days and come to the theatre every night. You can't do that sort of thing on the South Bank or Shaftesbury Avenue.
Not thinking of either place, we often drive past Dove Cottage on our way to Keswick and imagine Dorothy Wordsworth doing her ironing before going to a funeral. But what did brother William think of the theatre?
Would he have gone to see The Lonesome West at Theatre by The Lake? Probably not. A bit of Googling throws up a critic who suggests that Wordsworth took a fancy to the "lustres, lights, the carving and the gilding" of theatres when he was in London but what he saw "pass'd not beyond the suburbs of the mind".
We have accordingly knocked him off the TBTL mailing list.
