Feb 24, 2007 Matinee

The play was very well done. Lee Evans may well have been chosen for the part so he could do his usual “innocent abroad” character. His shuffling, sighing, fidgeting and retying his shoelaces at the beginning was very reminiscent of his usual persona. It worked well for the role, because it was guaranteed to annoy Jason’s character, who was trying to pretend he was in a normal situation, and read his paper. Jason was full of pent-up aggression throughout. I don’t recall the play being done for laughs last time I saw it, so that was interesting to see, but I have to say I still don’t really like Pinter’s disconnected dialogue. We did get one or two Jason bum views, which were very nice, but I was too far away to see if his eyes were really very blue.

As Carole said, Jason seemed to think he had done a bad performance, but it was fine for me. Some mobile phones went off during the show, and Jason mentioned that he was annoyed by this when we spoke to him.

When we went round to the stage door, following the previous stories of annoying autograph hunters, I was amazed that we and the Scottish girl Carole mentioned were the only people there, until one or two more wandered along later. There was a Peace Rally just up the road in Trafalgar Square following an anti-war protest march, so maybe that accounted for fewer people, unless it was just because it was a matinee. However, that rally gave us an amusing incident, because of course there were loads of police everywhere. Just as we started to talk to Jason, about four policemen came up to the stage door, and asked, “Can we use your toilet?” Jason said it wasn’t his toilet, but yes they could! He then said to us he could hardly turn down the police, could he?

Jason was very friendly and chatty as ever, and we were able to speak to him for quite a while because there were so few of us. He said he was off to buy some more stage make-up. I said I didn’t realise he had to buy his own, but Jason said yes, Lee and he both did their own make-up.

Carole had a print of one of Liadan’s Lucius drawings for Jason to sign, and I mentioned Liadan sometimes drew herself as Narcissa too. We then had a discussion re Narcissa, where Jason said perhaps we would never see her in a film, and we said she was crucial for Half-Blood Prince. I said I thought he’d read all the HP books, but Jason admitted he hadn’t read HBP because he’s not in it! He also said he was disappointed when scenes were cut from the long books (by which I assume he must have meant Lucius scenes from OOTP) so he had decided just to read the scripts. Jason said someone had told him the dementors had left Azkaban, and he was very disappointed that if Lucius escaped it might not be very dramatic after all.

Jason told Carole his daughter liked the Aussie children’s book she had given him on Friday evening, and also blamed her Tim-Tams for giving him a sugar rush. He signed our programmes – I had a special message because I told him I’d been in hospital. My message read, “[Name], with love + awe. Glad you made it! Jason Isaacs x.”

My husband took a photo of me & Jason, and one of us with Carole too. I even managed to look half decent in them, which makes a change. I had my arm on Jason’s shoulder – and I could feel he is very slightly built, he’s deceptive on film, he fills the screen. And yes his eyes are very blue, much more so than they seem in some films – I guess it all depends on the lighting and the colour saturation of the film.

Jason was wearing a fleece I think he said he was given at Sundance – he pointed at the logo and said he wasn’t really advertising Poker, he just wore it because it was a freebie!