I’d been putting it off, but when I started running out of room in my house to store the programmes I knew I had to act. Throwing away the contents of 10 large storage boxes was not an option, but I thought a library or drama school might want them – and then at least they would have a second life.
Disposing of more than a thousand programmes has been a surprisingly emotional experience. I had accidentally amassed them since becoming a regular theatregoer in my teens, and then a critic writing about theatre and comedy since the Noughties. I try to keep any hoarding tendency in check so never deliberately set out to keep them but, like Topsy, they just growed.
I could have told you without looking that Shakespeare – particularly Twelfth Night, the Henry plays and As You Like It, my favourites – would feature heavily, as would Euripedes’ Medea, Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, which never, ever, get old for me. And so it proved, as programmes for them all rapidly sailed into solid double figures. (It was easy to assess because the programmes were stored by letter, though not strictly alphabetically. I like order, but I’m not a total nerd.) Hamlet was also well into the double-digit club.
Yet rummaging through the tightly packed storage boxes proved to be a big mistake, because that’s when the emotions kicked in. In one box of panto programmes, I found the one from when my late mother and I went to see Danny La Rue, her favourite performer. I’ve kept it as I think even professional organiser Marie Kondo at her strictest would allow me that.
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Read MoreI found the programme for Arthur Riordan’s exuberantly daft comedy Improbable Frequency – my all-time Fringe favourite, which I reviewed in 2006 and still remember frequently with a laugh. So yes, overwhelmingly happy memories – but, still, of times past.
I was trying to think positive thoughts when I returned home, only to find another large storage box lurking, somehow forgotten, under my desk.
This one contains programmes from the Wimbledon championships, another of my great loves, which I first attended as a 12-year-old. Can I bear to throw these out? I may need some therapy first.
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