After the abysmal houses for the recent season of The Extraordinary Revelations of Orca the Gold Fish, David Tristram’s very clever and well-acted two-hander at the Masque, it was cheering to see such a crowd on the last night of Fallen Angels recently. Both productions had good review, but Noel Coward proved the crowd pleaser.
The star of the show was Jana Botha as the inebriated, plummy toned, love-sick society-lady Jane Banbury clutching a bottle of champagne in one hand and a glass in the other. It could not have been more removed from her portrayal of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream of 2015.
It just shows what versatile young actress she is.
She even maintained her Dame Edith Evans’s character and voice when handing out the prizes for a fund-raising raffle on the stage after the performance. I know because I was one of the fortunate winners of two bottles of excellent wine, which Jana somehow managed to hand to me, while still clutching her stage bottle of French champagne!
Fruity question
I’m going bananas about bananas. When I opened the latest packet of six, they looked in perfect condition – firm and bright yellow. I ate two on consecutive days for breakfast, and then opened No 3 to find that the two ends still looked perfect but the middle was grey-black and soggy. I threw it away. Same with Nos 4, 5 and 6.
In recent months I’ve noticed a tendency of uneven ripening but never so bad. Are they being artificially ripened? I’d love to know.
DIY
The blonde went into a bookstore and asked the saleswoman: “Where’s the self-help section please?” She replied, “If I told you, that would defeat the purpose.”
fionachisholm@iafrica.com