I go to a Shakespeare play.

I won tickets in the House Magazine to go and watch a Shakespeare play. Ordinarily that would be like winning vitamins, or a trip to the toilet roll factory (although I do wonder whether they really have little Labradors running round those places checking the texture strength and length of freshly-made loo paper), but as I outlined in a previous post, this play stars one Michelle Gomez.

Known for Green Wing and apparently having starred in a number of other reputable productions all of which are in the programme and none of which spring to my mind quite readily, Michelle starred in perhaps my favourite ever advert – the Heat magazine advert. You know, the one where she goes into the doctors – “excuse me, where’s your copy of Heat magazine, please?” “Do you have an appointment?” “Do I look ill?” Amusing, you’ll no doubt agree.

But yes – Shakespeare. What a miserable, misogynistic, callous old shit. Who knew? There was hardly a likeable character in the whole thing (that’s not to get confused with something along the lines of ‘the actors were all totally crap’ – they weren’t), and it was really quite sad. There was a lot of humping and nutting and slapping, it was like a blockbuster for the stage. Speaking of the stage, that was excellent too. I’ve been weaned on a diet of papier mache school play sets, so the big lorry reversing on stage was mighty impressive - down to the exhaust fumes. What impressed me most about Michelle was that she has range. I don’t know about everyone else but at least I’ll remember her for two things now.

As for the play itself, I don’t know if anyone has ever tried to turn domestic abuse into comedy since, but Will had the chutzpah to try. I suppose I could give him that.