Snow

Wow. It snows and everything grinds to halt. It has snowed before hasn’t it? I mean, we are a country where from time to time snow does fall, right? Not in large quantities and not that often. But it does happen. From the news coverage and general fussing, it feels otherwise. Sloshing my way into work this morning, there were delays on the trains and the world’s most stoic commuter bottleneck at the Waterloo entrance to the Northern Line. Needless to say lateness ensued.

No lateness on my part last night, fortunately. I went to see Typo, a darkly comic two-hander about modern office life, at the Tristan Bates Theatre, a cool little studio space just off Shaftesbury Avenue and, I admit, a place I’ve walked past on numerous occasions but never actually visited. The play, a series of loosely connected episodes, was tightly written and greatly enjoyable, especially one scene, a Kafkaesque job interview, where a hapless guy has essentially meaningless questions aggressively fired at him by a scary, suited woman. The cast did wonders with just a couple of office chairs and a folding table (which doubles entertainingly as a photocopier at one point) and, at just an hour in length, it recognises its limits and bows out before it becomes repetitious or tired. A skill I wish more productions would learn.