My brand of retail therapy is to buy theatre tickets – there is even a special drawer at home to store these. Forget the “promise to pay the bearer” printed on a piece of currency: the potential crammed onto this small oblong with its commitment to a date, a time, a seat number, is infinitely more thrilling.  Physical possession of these printed promises has an undoubted therapeutic effect on me (and allowing a set of tickets to cascade in a long stream towards the floor is a bizarre pleasure).  Anyway, a particularly despondent mood on Friday resulted in two Globe Bookings, two NT Live reservations and finally a slightly desperate decision to flee to London today.  I am en route to listen to Simon Russell Beale talk about his favourite music, as an indulgent escape from studying. It seems to have been too long since I was last in an auditorium and my sense of self is under threat.

Will Simon prove worth it?  I will let you know.  In the meantime I am ridiculously happy to have – finally – been able to commit to a Globe performance of Henry V.  The production is already touring – and Jamie Parker’s disarming and engaging tweets mean I feel virtually involved – but the special excitement is the knowledge that I will be able to stand in the Globe courtyard and respond to the chorus’ invitation to use my imaginary forces within this wooden O.  Shakespeare rarely mentions  anything about his stage or his theatre – there are a few references to painted heavens and the pit of hell below – and so the prospect of hearing this glorious rhetoric about the power of language and imagination actually in the Globe (as Frank Turner would say “right here, right now”) is just thrilling.  I am already reminding myself that it would probably be a bit of an over-reaction to cheer at that point. Perhaps I can tweet Jamie and ask his opinion.

Now on the train back and the meme of live performance reasserts itself.  Simon was of course utterly delightful and engaging; the venue (downstairs at the Soho theatre)  intimate and completely relaxed; it was lovely to see Mark Shenton, whom I follow on Twitter, ‘in real life’; two talented young musicians performed Sondheim (having had piano lessons in my youth I am so impressed when someone can play and sing at the same time) and, amongst all the charming anecdotes, modest reflection and intelligent observation, characteristic of the quiet phenomenon that is SRB, one simple comment stood out.  He mentioned the elation that one feels – as a member of the audience – after a really good performance.  Apparently the actors don’t feel the same thing. They may feel huge satisfaction and other forms of great  pleasure but for them it is, in a way, expected: they have worked to create this event.  The audience are the lucky ones, the recipients of this gift.  All we have to do is obey the instructions on the ticket, turn up, wait for that moment when the lights dim and silence descends – and be prepared to be transported, replenished, restored.

“Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;..
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’th’receiving earth;
For ’tis your thoughts …now”

Theatre as recreation.