Protest

When I first saw the Ministry of Defence building splattered in blood-red paint, I assumed that it had only just happened. There were no police or protestors about but the damage was so extensive and so shocking, I felt sure it was recent. No decent government would put up with that for long. I was east-bound in a car at the time and as we drove past I craned out of the window for a last look. The Whitehall clean-up crew would arrive soon, I assumed, and I gawped because I wouldn’t see it again. I cannot for the life of me understand why it’s all right to leave the MoD looking like an abattoir But I did. The next day, there it still was, and the day after that, and the one following. I’ve been back every day since just to check.

This is the year in which Michael Gambon died, so by definition a grim one for theatre. Of all the tributes, one of the most acute was by Tom Hollander, who recalled how expressive Gambon’s voice was after 30 years on stage. He could reach hundreds of people while seeming to address only one or two. That’s essential theatre acting. When Gambon turned to cinema, his voice had become supple and mellow. It set me to thinking of other great cinema voices. Simone Signoret came first to mind. Then Jeanne Moreau, James Mason, and above all, Henry Fonda. These actors have you at hello. I would have added Marlene Dietrich, but if you can be so easily parodied, can you be truly great? A Los Angeles record producer tells me that teenagers no longer consider actors as role models.

The nice young man in the library had told us he was worried about protests when I booked tickets for Drag Queen Story Hour. We only began to hear the chants halfway through the show; they drifted up from the courtyard in front of St John’s Hall, the council building that houses Penzance library, through the window behind where my son and I were sitting. They got louder and louder – the children started looking round, puzzled, and the drag queen gesticulated at me to close the window. It took me a few moments to realise what the gestures meant – I had assumed that it was what they call ‘vogueing’ – but I eventually pushed the sash closed. But not before I heard what they were chanting: ‘Drag! Is! For! Everyone!

In the theatre, to boo is taboo. There was an exception last week when Andrew Lloyd Webber’s name was booed by the crowd at the final performance of his musical Cinderella after a letter written by him to the cast, in which he called the show a ‘costly mistake’, was read out on stage. But that’s rare. Outside of panto season, the West End generally prefers a play to be received in a sepulchral hush. It’s curious that booing is absent from modern theatre, because it’s as old as European drama. The earliest reports of audience booing were recorded at the annual festival of Dionysus in Athens where playwrights competed to win prizes for their efforts.

Anyone still talking about ‘two sides in the transgender debate’ needs to look at the footage from Bristol yesterday. Actually, there was no debate. What happened was one group of people (mainly men) intimidating a second group of people (mainly women). The video is terrifying. https://twitter.com/thewomencov/status/1538516264821325824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw If you couldn’t catch what was said through their masks, here is my transcript: Go, get in the sea. Die out. You’re dinosaurs. Dinosaurs. Fossils. You’re going to die out (x5). You are ancient history. You are fossils. You are dinosaurs. You have failed (x2). Your ideas have failed. Get in the sea. Get in the sea like Colston. Go home. Get in the sea.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) are once again blocking London’s streets, reportedly emboldened by the Supreme Court’s recent Ziegler decision – which found that deliberately blocking roads can be lawful protest. The police maintain that the judgment does not substantially change the law and that XR, like everyone else, has a right to assemble and protest but not to cause serious disruption to the community or to hold the streets to ransom. But while the judgment is not a sea change in the law – whatever some protestors may now say – it does reveal that the law as it stands is failing to adequately protect the public’s right to use the highways.

Havana There is an astonishing patience in the Cuban people, born of endless waiting. When a store has, say, chicken, people queue, often for days. But on Monday, outside the Zanja police station in central Havana, people weren’t waiting for food. They were waiting — patiently — for news of family members who had been arrested during unprecedented protests at the weekend. The demonstrations flared like a petrol fire. Cubans had settled down for lunch, many preparing to watch the Euro 2020 final, when news spread of a march in the town of San Antonio de los Baños on the outskirts of Havana.