Fitzbillies and Blue/Orange

Tonight was a bit of a night out for us. We had tickets for Blue/Orange at the Arts Theatre so we decided to get some proper food first rather than just a curry or chips afterwards like normal. The original plan was to go to Light but when we got there it looked pretty much closed, or possibly only the bar was open, either way it looked uninviting so we went to Fitzbillies instead who these days run a restaurant as well as the cake shop. We had a pretty good meal, my Moroccan vegetable lasagne was a bit on the heavy side (and rather lacking in vegetables), and friendly service, but it's quite pricey (£50 for 2 courses for 2 with no alcohol). We did have the restaurant to ourselves for the first hour though thanks to the early start.

So then to the theatre. The play is a three-hander including Roger Lloyd Pack and directed by Kathy Burke. It was very well acted but I have to confess to not really getting it. It was hard to see (for me) quite what the message was meant to be. Also quite heavy going with a first half of 80 minutes - it's actually structured as three acts but these days nobody seems to believe in two intervals, which is something that I'm sure used to be common when I was younger.

Interestingly it was actually on BBC4 a month ago starring Brian Cox - in that case it was cut down to a 90 minute screenplay. Having seen the stage version it would be interesting to see what a faster version was like.