Welcome, feel free to sit up straight and listen

This is a blog which aims to finally put everything in its place. For too long have the more trivial and mundane aspects, products and people who infiltrate our lives gone un-critiqued. The same can unfortunately be said for the majestic, awe-inspiring creations and natural wonders of this universe of which we may feel too small and insignificant to pass judgement upon. This is where the uncertainty ends my friends. Henceforth, everything shall be reviewed in the same manner with which everything else is treated.

Friday 10 February 2012

La Chunga

Thanks to the huge popularity of Sergeant Edmond Horse-Twattersley's guest review on the Edgar Allen Poe stage play I am delighted to welcome to the pages of this blog his charming and noble wife, Lady Cytherea Horse-Twattersly. She specially requested being allowed to review a play from the same theatre group and I have to admit it was pretty hard to say no. She was, let's say, very forceful in her persuasions. Bon appetite ladies and gentlemen.

Lady Cytherea Horse-Twattersly
It is often stated that the foibles of men are relinquished through the generous and kind-hearted nature of the fairer sex. Utter tosh of course. Having been wedded to my pitiful excuse of a husband for almost thirty years now I have learnt that kindness and generosity have done nothing to quell the tenacity and ferocity of his spirit. Instead, one must learn to treat ones husband as a form of pet, or to a lesser extent, one of the servant class. These simple beings understand only one language, and that is the language of strict discipline. A short, sharp thwack with a cold tablespoon did wonders for my Edmond when he used to get frisky, promiscuous thoughts after watching 'Eurotrash' on a Thursday night.

Men are nothing more than beasts driven only by the desires of their throbbing members. It is our duty to remind them of their places in this World, to utilise their brute forces to create and provide for us a comfortable standard of living. I must say I read my husband's review of the previous production with great amusement. To hear poor, deluded Edmond so worked up and overwrought by a mere stage show, he certainly was the laughing stock of the Thursday night bridge 'n' bitch meeting when I showed it to the other ladies. From the moment he blustered into the house that night in November, red-faced and panting at what he had witnessed, I knew I had to see first hand the troupe who could so easily reduce my husband to a gibbering wreck.

So it came to be I reserved myself a seat for the Wednesday showing of La Chunga at the Phoenix Artists Club in Leicester Square. A squalid little bar cum impromptu theatre space and a well known haunt for the technical oiks of the theatre district, it had all the charm and rustic appeal of a Devonshire Bordello. I ordered myself a vermouth and bitter lemon with extra slice from the bar and was promptly ushered next door into the stage area. Some effort had gone into the design of that room I must say, with it's torn bamboo rugs hanging from the walls and assorted South American decorations it certainly resembled my great-niece's holiday photos of her travels in Central America last Spring, minus the various scenes of topless debauchery, I hasten to add.

This is where a fart joke would go if I was so purile.
Which I'm not.
And thus, seated between some brutish Italians, I settled into my chair and prepared myself for the imminent show by draining the last of my vermouth. The lights dimmed, the music rose and the liquor flooded my brain with it's warming sensuality as I witnessed my first vision of the evening in the shape of the comely actress playing the titular Chunga. As she strode onto the stage masterfully portraying the embittered bar owner, memories of The Buckinghamshire Little Ladies Equestrian Training Acadamy came flooding back. There was something almost tangible about her purposeful stride, that long flowing mane, the husky purr of her voice and that strong, prominent upper jaw which instantly reminded me of my first riding mistress, Ms. Regina Higgenbottom. She, that powerfully handsome woman, first taught me the forbidden pleasures of the love that dare not speak its name.

However, I digress. Next onto the stage came the four men who played the gambling reprobates of Chunga's bar. Typical of men, their conversation revolved around bawdy subjects shouted at each other over a table of alcohol and dice. It put me in mind of the time I accompanied Edmond to The Bullingdon Club for one of his Oxford graduate reunions. Much like walking a dog on Hampstead Heath, one has to let one's man off the lead every now and then to allow him some sense of empowerment, so that he is even more malleable and willing to obey when one calls him back. I watched with some amusement as these men talked themselves up in front of each other, only to be crushed by Chunga's icily sardonic reproaches. 

It was then that they began singing a rousing chorus with the attempt to glorify their stations and the second vision began. No sooner had the first line been uttered, "We are the Superstuds, we don't wanna work..." that I closed my eyes and allowed sweet nostalgia to again permeate my senses. With that one word, 'Superstuds' echoing around my mind I was transported back to the rolling hills of my formative years. It was Autumn, on a mist-laden field in the Cotswalds where Ms. Higgenbottom had insisted I came accompanied by my beloved stud-colt 'Night's Rapture'. It was her that first taught me how to fully appreciate the magnificent strength of this wonderful beast. The feel of his locks between my hands, the gentle buck of his haunches as we cleared fence after fence together and the sweet scent of straw as we would lay together in the stables for hours on end all returned in a maelstrom of synaethsesia as I remembered the nickname I had given him, my own 'Superstud'.

Horse-Twattersly by name, Horse-Twattersly
by nature. Wait...what?
Again, I digress. Following a short interval where I ordered several more vermouths, it was time for act two. Returning to my seat I resolved to put those torrid thoughts away from my mind and try and concentrate on the play. I was able to hold back those desires which my own father had spent many years exorcising from my soul for a short while as the fantastical imagined scenes of what became of the beautiful Meche unfolded, until one of the men alluded to cutting the genitals off another. Oh glorious Rapture, taken from me too young because daddy found out about our sinful trysts, buried and left to rot in the family cemetery. How glad I was father never knew about the night before his burial, where I happened upon a large jar of formaldehyde from the local chemists and snuck down in the middle of the night, armed with the kitchen maid's bacon scissors to relieve the poor beast of his most precious endowment.

That crowning glory holds a special place in my private quarters, amongst my other most precious jewels and trinkets, where not even my personal maid-servant may enter. Though the rest of them have gathered an exorbitant amount of dust over the decades, that particular jar has remained as clean as a whistle. I would like to extend my thanks and gratitude to the entire Second Skin Theatre crew for showing me that my natural love for such wild and untamed beasts is not as sacrilegious as the rest of the family would have me believe. At least, that's what I took from it anyway.

Thank you Lady Cytherea, we look forward to hearing more theatre reviews from you and your family soon. If you would like to see La Chunga for yourself, it's playing at the Phoenix Artist Club, 1 Phoenix Street off Charing Cross Road, near Leicester Square. January 24th to February 19th, 2012. Tuesday to Thursday evenings at 7:30pm and Sunday matinees at 3pm. Tickets £12.