Live theatre

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In context with the DVDs of Shakespeare on offer I was delighted to attend a performance of King Lear this week.

Having been brought up in England where access to the best that theatre had to offer was a mere bus ride away, I was taken back to the days when as a student nurse free or cheap seats were available every night and posted on the notice board.

Drama, musicals, comedy they all lay at our feet. As impoverished students we lapped it up, frequently going back for second and third helpings of the same event. The gloriously funny Dora Bryan in Hello Dolly had us in stitches on so many evenings that she began to recognise us in the front rows and ad lib to us.

Sometimes the seats were far from the front, in fact up in the 'Gods' where a small pair of binoculars were very handy. The buzz we got when the curtain went up was far greater than any drug and the memory lasted longer. I felt this emotion again this week when the actors came on for the first scene in King Lear and it is still with me.

The immediacy of live theatre with all its possibilities for catastrophy, brilliance and everything in between is like no other form of entertainment. To hear and see once again the best that theatre has to offer was a treat indeed and the buzz goes on.

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