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Michael settled back in the seat and took a deep breath.
Some London theatres are comfortable. They give you
a good view of the stage no matter where you sit, the
seats are great, there's plenty of leg room, and the
bar's big enough to serve the entire audience before
the end of the interval and even to allow one or two
of them to sit down. Other theatres are old and dirty
and long overdue for new carpeting, the seats are squashed
together to fit as many people in as possible, and somehow,
when the seats are like that, you always seem to get
someone behind you who sneezes down your neck every
few minutes, or keeps fidgeting and nudging the back
of your seat with their knee.
Michael knew all of these things. He went to the theatre
a lot. It was generally under duress but it had given
him a chance to work out which ones were worth the price
of the ticket. The Coliseum in St Martin's Lane, where
he now sat with his parents and his sister, rated pretty
highly. With typical efficiency his mother had booked
early and secured tickets in the first row of the dress
circle so they looked down onto the dancers with an
uninterrupted view.
Michael knew the story of the ballet by heart. It was,
wait a minute, it was the third time he'd seen it. No
wonder it was getting boring. No, really, culture is
all well and good, but there are limits.
The story of The Nutcracker is this. A little girl
gets a toy soldier as a Christmas present. She falls
asleep and dreams that the solider comes to life. The
dream starts off as a nightmare but then turns out to
be quite pleasant really, and then she wakes up. And
people say classical music is difficult to understand!
They were already into the second act. Eight giant
bags of sweets came on. Michael supposed that each one
had a dancer hidden inside. The bags danced around each
other in intricate patterns and Michael wondered how
the dancers could see their way. He looked for peepholes
or for some kind of gauze, perhaps, that afforded a
view but there was nothing but plain, coloured fabric.
He leaned forward slightly in his seat, a faint hope
stirring inside him that they might collide. Now that
would be worth seeing.
But the dance ended without incident and, terribly
slowly, the ballet drew to a close. When it was finally
over they all filed out into the cold streets of the
West End. After a struggle, Michael managed to persuade
his parents to take them to the Rain Forest Cafe in
Shaftsbury Avenue. It took a lot of work. His father
wanted to go to the Italian restaurant next to the theatre
but Michael had already suffered enough, and a trip
to the RFC really wasn't too much to ask for. The issue
swayed in the balance for a while until Charlotte worked
out what was happening. Then she added her pleas to
Michael's and they proved just about enough to force
Fred and Wilma to back down. As far as Michael was concerned,
if they wanted to eat tagliatelle or something in marinara
sauce, they could do it another time. He had been brought
up to appreciate fine food but right now he felt a compelling
need to be subversive, and a bacon cheeseburger would
just about do the trick. He might agree to tiramisu
for dessert, if they had it, but that was about as far
in the direction of Rome as he was prepared to incline.
The RFC was unique. There was a shop upstairs which
sold toy animals and books about ecology. The restaurant
proper was down a long flight of stairs in the basement.
It was decorated as a jungle, with gorillas and elephants
scattered around, and monkeys dangling from the ceiling.
Some of the models were animatronic.
It was fabulous and tacky at the same time, conceived
by someone with the sort of profound, quirky sense of
humour that Michael warmed to. There was an indoor waterfall
which made an impressive amount of noise and the whole
ceiling was covered by hanging vines. The barstools
looked from the back like the rear ends of jungle animals,
complete with tails. The irreverence of the place made
it cool. Best of all, every twenty minutes or so there
was a tropical storm right there in the restaurant,
with flashing lights, claps of recorded thunder and
rainfall.
It was a little like the special effects that had started
up in Michael's home village by the time the waiter
brought their food.
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