Austentatious

The news that the Milk Monitors troupe of improvising humourists were to perform at the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton was greeted in the neighbouring town of Winchester with delight and curiosity; and the suggestion of a short drive to watch their performance on the Sunday evening met with general and excited agreement. The journey along the M3 was as serene as nature could make it; and was concluded with the happy discovery of Gower car park immediately opposite the omnibus stop and the main theatre entrance, Mr H having on all previous occasions driven straight past it in pursuit of a bay at the rear of the campus and as far away from the theatre as possible.


The entertainment was introduced by the eminent academic Dr Sam Patton of Rotterdam, who explained, to the consternation and enlightenment of her rustic audience, that Jane Austen penned as many as 789 lost novels, which are being discovered, chiefly by her, in the most remarkable of places, such as ironing boards and the tail of a dressage pony. One of these lost works, to a title proposed by a member of the audience, was A Lady's Chocolate Priorities (another lost title, Indifference, apparently being improper for public presentation) and the troupe of humourists consequently improvised an hour-length dramatic entertainment to this subject.

The plot, which concerned chocolate addiction, dentistry, and a lake with a golden swan which could only be viewed by members of the Maiden family aged eighteen and over, was unmistakably the work of Miss Austen of Steventon, marked as it was by a perspicacious observation of the follies and foibles of humankind, a tender belief in the triumph of virtue over the ravages of contraband cocoa products and an affecting portrayal of the yearning female heart. The public were much engaged by the good-humoured spectacle and roused from their rustic reveries by the play upon words concerning chocolate, the deft  division of the piece into scenes of plot and sub-plot and the amusing interaction of the performers, identified only as daguerrotypes on the programme, but including the accomplished Miss Cariad  Lloyd (Ms, as the programme has it, not being a title Miss Austen would have recognised), now appearing in a televisual comedy of her own devising. Miss CJ Lodge played upon the violoncello, and the evening afforded much pleasure to an audience not usually treated to such sophisticated metropolitan entertainments.


It is often asserted that Americans are rather more adept at improvising than the English who, as a general rule, are never happier than when being instructed exactly what to do, most especially in their artistic pursuits; yet while this may hold as a general truth, the Austentatious troupe provided a vigorous, and amusing, exception, and both of the Winchester visitors left their new-found car park feeling greatly satisfied with their evening's adventure.