This weekend I was fortunate to visit Hoxton Hall in the east end of London to see the play ‘Arabian Nights’.
The Hall dates back to the nineteenth century and was for a long time, home to the temperance society who established it as a haven for women caught up in the misery of gin drinking so prevalent in those times. Walking back to Old Street station after the show we passed numerous clubs and bars with their drunken patrons liberally sprawling onto the street. It was a scene I am sure the good folk who ran Hoxton Hall all that time ago would have recognised, and one we quickly avoided. It seems that gin is once again the ‘in’ drink.
The show itself was very enjoyable, but then Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba and the forty thieves and similar tales are classics than cannot fail to impress. I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone in the area and as a theatre is very intimate and inviting.
It was once again interesting to note that most of the misfortune of the characters in the tales is due to excessive alcohol leading to some calamity or other. I am sure the temperance folk of old would have enjoyed that moral lesson being told as well.
As a final thought, the play is otherwise known as ‘1001 nights’, a once impossibly long time for me to comprehend without alcohol. Having now managed well in excess of 2001 nights without a drink I was pleased to think that for every one of those nights I have a story to tell, none of which involve booze, and all of which relay a happy memory or something achieved.
The Hall dates back to the nineteenth century and was for a long time, home to the temperance society who established it as a haven for women caught up in the misery of gin drinking so prevalent in those times. Walking back to Old Street station after the show we passed numerous clubs and bars with their drunken patrons liberally sprawling onto the street. It was a scene I am sure the good folk who ran Hoxton Hall all that time ago would have recognised, and one we quickly avoided. It seems that gin is once again the ‘in’ drink.
The show itself was very enjoyable, but then Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba and the forty thieves and similar tales are classics than cannot fail to impress. I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone in the area and as a theatre is very intimate and inviting.
It was once again interesting to note that most of the misfortune of the characters in the tales is due to excessive alcohol leading to some calamity or other. I am sure the temperance folk of old would have enjoyed that moral lesson being told as well.
As a final thought, the play is otherwise known as ‘1001 nights’, a once impossibly long time for me to comprehend without alcohol. Having now managed well in excess of 2001 nights without a drink I was pleased to think that for every one of those nights I have a story to tell, none of which involve booze, and all of which relay a happy memory or something achieved.
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