A Dirty Martini with Evelyn Waugh

Walking into Trailblaze Theatre Company’s soirée was a riot ─ a song and dance routine in full Twenties swing. The conceit of having Waugh-the-author on stage commenting and typing at the same time his characters performed all around him and the Hendrick’s Library itself, was invigorating if a touch disconcerting for the audience – or maybe that was just the free gin, well it was Waugh after all. The decadence of class and era was uppermost and the final chapter – a morality tale of exploitation and dissonance; a kind of hangover from Victorian days – certainly left a bitter taste. Fitting, you could say for our current malaise, which had its beginnings in Thatcher’s Britain, and the champagne-swilling class of city brokers, out for no-one but themselves with lives wrecked, carelessly in their wake.

Hendrick’s Library of Delightfully Peculiar Writings, 24 May 2012

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