Et tu, Paddington?

by Caroline Lawrence

One day in 2014, according to urban mythology, director Sam Mendes took his young son to the set of Spectre. They happened to be filming a scene between James Bond and the weapons boffin known as ‘Q’. After the third take, Mendes felt a tug on his hand and looked down to see his son gazing up at him in wide-eyed wonder. ‘Daddy!’ whispered young Mendes, ‘Q is Paddington!’

Ben Wishaw, the actor who plays Q, had just done the voice of the bear from darkest Peru in the movie Paddington. So the confusion was understandable. 

I was wondering if I would have a similar disconnect last Sunday afternoon at a London’s newest theatre when I went to see Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The actor Ben Wishaw was playing the part of Brutus in a new version of the play directed by Sir Nicholas Hytner. 

I don’t usually go to the theatre because I’m always aware that I’m watching actors playing a role. As a result I rarely get caught up in the story, especially when people get killed (I can see him breathing!) or kiss each other (I wonder if she had garlic for lunch?) For some reason this doesn’t bother me in a movie, perhaps because I know nothing can go wrong. But it can on stage. Those are real people standing down there. 

Also, sometimes I get sleepy and tend to doze off right where the actors can see me.

Also, sometimes I can’t always see or hear the actors properly. Last year I walked out of Robert Icke’s celebrated Hamlet in the interval because I could only see the middle third of the stage at the Harold Pinter Theatre and I couldn’t hear the actors at all. 

So when my Shakespeare-loving friend Aidan Elliott told me about a new production of Julius Caesar where audience members who stand in the pit became part of the Roman mob with the actors moving among them, my interest was sparked. 

‘Sometimes they even jostle you’, said Aidan. ‘In a gentle way.’ 

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I like being gently jostled.’ 

And I booked my ticket online. 

The Bridge Theatre by Tower Bridge is London’s newest theatre. It is state of the art. It can do anything. Everybody can see. Everybody can hear. 

As soon as I went into the pit I was engaged. They had cleverly set it up like a political rally with a warm-up band to play music and stagehands dressed as merchandise-sellers flogging Julius Caesar baseball hats and T-shirts. The band started playing as people continued to file in and they soon got us clapping and shouting for Caesar. It wasn’t until Mark Antony in a tracksuit gently jostled me aside (yay!) that I knew the play had started. 

The next two hours sped by, scene changes marked by Caesar’s bodyguards moving the crowd back and forth so that platforms in the floor could rise and fall. I felt a sense of camaraderie with the other audience members nearby. It was fun. I was happy to be part of the mob because I wasn’t just watching the play; I was part of it. 

‘It’s a surprise both pleasant and alarming,’ said director Sir Nicholas Hytner in a recent interview on Front Row, ‘how easy it turns out to be to move, manipulate, corral four hundred people who’ve come to watch a play. We have been able to suck them in to a much greater degree than I thought we would be able to… It seems to me to be a great way to do Shakespeare.’ 

Because the actors are (literally) within spitting distance you can’t space out. You have to concentrate. And that means you really hear Shakespeare’s great lines, especially in this production where each word is pronounced clearly and with meaning. 

Although I never forgot I was watching actors playing their parts, that was part of the appeal. That’s David Morrissey from The Walking Dead and Britannia playing Mark Anthony! There’s a kind of palimpsest where the actor’s celebrity overlays the part he’s playing. But you’re a palimpsest, too, playing at being a member of the mob. You are collaborating with them. 

Casting Michelle (‘Catelyn Stark’) Fairley as lean and hungry Cassius was inspired. My friend Aidan says she was his MVP. Because the production was in modern dress she totally worked as a powerful, female Cassius. 

Another standout for me was Adjoa Andoh as Casca. Exuding a menacing charm, she relished Shakespeare’s words and made them new to me. 

And what words. 

Every time I see a play by Shakespeare I am freshly astonished by his genius. Of course there are the famous and familiar lines like: It was Greek to me, Et tu, Brute, and The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars...

But there were lines and paragraphs I’d never noticed before. 

They startled me with their originality and made me think. This by Brutus:

O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb
That carries anger as the flint bears fire;
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cold again.

And I love Cassius blaming her choleric nature on her mother: 
Have not you love enough to bear with me,
When that rash humour which my mother gave me
Makes me forgetful?

And of course it was a thrill to see Ben (‘Paddington’) Wishaw, superb as always. At no time did I think of the marmalade-loving bear from Peru, especially when he pulled out a handgun and gave Julius Caesar a bloody coup de grace. 

If, like me, you aren’t a fan of theatre, this is the time to make an exception and try something new. I promise you will not doze off. 

Three tips: 

I. STAND. As you go into the pit imagine it as a clock face with you entering at 6 o’clock. Following advice of a friendly coat check girl, I stood at 10’oclock and had a brilliant view of almost everyone and everything. But don’t worry, you will get a good view wherever you are. 

II. CHECK. Check your coat, scarf and bag; it gets very warm under the lights. The cloakroom at the back of the ground floor lobby is free and they have a good system of getting your stuff back to you quickly at the end. 

III. PLUG. Bring earplugs for the loud rock music at the beginning and noisy gunfire at the end. I used the earbuds on my phone. 

Queen Victoria's first railway journey by Janie Hampton

Exactly 175 years ago this month, Queen Victoria, who had then ruled Britain for five years, was the first British monarch ever to travel by train. The first railway line in Britain had been opened in 1830, between the cities of Liverpool and Manchester, when Victoria was 11 years old. Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, loved new inventions, and persuaded her to try this new form of transport.
On June 13, in 1842, the 23-year-old queen and her family took a horse-drawn carriage from Windsor Castle to Slough railway station, four miles away. There they boarded the royal saloon carriage, specially designed like a grand home. It had a padded silk ceiling, blue velvet sofas, matching silk curtains, fringed lampshades, fine mahogany wooden tables and thick carpets. The Times described it: "the fittings are upon a most elegant and magnificent scale, tastefully improved by bouquets of rare flowers arranged within the carriage." 

Imagine traveling from Slough to Paddington in this carriage!

The train was pulled by a locomotive engine powered by coal and steam, and took only 25 minutes to reach Paddington Station in West London. (Today the fastest journey from Slough to Paddington takes 14 minutes.) The engine was called Phlegethon of the Fire Fly class and had been built in 1840. A replica of the original Fire Fly is now at Didcot Railway Centre in Oxfordshire, just up the Great Western Line from Slough. On the footplate was Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the famous engineer who had designed Paddington station, the railway line from London to Slough and the world’s first iron ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean the SS Great Britain. The young queen wrote to her uncle, King Leopold of Belgium, that she was ‘quite charmed by this new way of travelling’. However, the Queen worried that the normal speed of 43 miles per hour would affect her health, so she insisted that her trains never went more than 30 miles per hour. Later a signal was fitted to the roof of the royal saloon in case the Queen wanted to tell the train driver to slow down.
The next day The Times newspaper reported: "Yesterday Her Majesty the Queen, for the first time, returned from her sojourn at Windsor Castle, accompanied by her illustrious consort, Prince Albert, Count Mensdorf, &c.by way of the Great Western Railway. The intention of Her Majesty to return to town by railroad was first intimated to the authorities at Paddington on Saturday afternoon, and in consequence preparations on an extensive scale were ordered to be made for the transit of the Royal pair from Slough to the Paddington terminus, which were carried into effect with the greatest secrecy."

Queen Victoria and her family of 11 children spent every summer holiday at Balmoral Castle, 500 miles north of London, near Aberdeen in Scotland. To travel by road from London to Scotland took several days by horse and carriage. But by train it took only one day, or a night sleeping on the train.

After Prince Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria went even more often to Balmoral, always by train. The local railway station, Ballater, had a special platform long enough to accommodate the royal train made up of a locomotive, coal truck and up to eight carriages. Queen Victoria’s royal saloon carriage was the first in the world to have a lavatory. Another carriage had a fully-equipped kitchen and separate dining room. At night time, servants prepared the beds with fine linen sheets. Each sleeping compartment had hinged sinks that tilted into the panelled wooden walls. Next to each bed was a special hook to hang one’s watch, with a suede-leather pad to prevent the watch-glass from breaking as the train rattled over the points or swerved round corners. One carriage carried the servants – dressers, valets, footmen, maids and tutors. There were special carriages for the royal horses and another carriage for the royal luggage. The royal dogs went too, among them greyhounds, Skye terriers and pomeranians. Even the royal waiting room at Paddington station was designed like a palace with a marble fireplace, gold painted furniture and glass chandeliers.

Queen Victoria’s grandchildren ruled seven of the European monarchies, so dukes, princes and aristocracy often came from all over Europe to visit Balmoral Castle. The men wore Scottish kilts, and went shooting deer or grouse on the heather moors. Pony carts carried baskets of fine food and wine for picnic lunches, with special treats such as grapes grown in glass houses.

From The Home Alphabet Book, 1857 Dean & Son, London

In 1897 Queen Victoria had been on the throne for sixty years. After a grand procession through London for her Diamond Jubilee, she went by royal train to Balmoral. For this special occasion, the engine trains were not their normal black: from London to Crewe they had been painted red; from Crew to Carlisle, near the Scottish border, they were white; and from there to Balmoral they were red – all the colours of the British flag! By then trains could travel from London to Edinburgh in less than ten hours.

Queen Victoria's funeral train took the same
journey as her first trip.

Queen Victoria was 82 years old when she died in 1901 on the Isle of Wight. Her coffin was transported to the mainland by sea and then transferred onto a train to London. From Paddington in London it went by train to Windsor – the same journey she had made 61 years earlier. She was buried in the Royal Mausoleum in Windsor.

Queen Elizabeth II celebrated the anniversary of her great great
grandmother's train journey by opening the new electric
train line to Paddington on 13 June 2017.

www.janiehampton.co.uk