They’re back. In August the capital fills with bored, dim-witted, half-naked semi-vagrants who have nothing to do here but get in the way of Londoners who do have things to do here. Tourism is an invitation to robbery. If you aren’t going to a place to work, you’re going there to get worked over. The rites of mob travel invert all the natural obligations of xenophilia. Natives become swindlers and their victims happily connive in the evacuation of their own purses.
No one objects because it’s understood that a tourist isn’t a visitor in the proper sense. He’s in London but not engaged with it. He’s half here and half at home. He meanders about, surrounded by a gaggle of friends, or in a little family unit, jabbering away in his native tongue, consuming the trusted cuisine of his own nation, and gawping at sights he’s seen a million times in films and photographs. His bubble of familiarity seals him from the city as he floats alongside it. He affects nothing here and nothing here affects him. He might as well spend a week at Heathrow.
I shouldered my way through a throng of these ill-dressed easyJet victims and reached the doors of the Trafalgar Studios where a brand new musical, Betwixt!, has opened in the 90-seater basement space. The venue, like the tourists, is in the West End but not quite of it. At first sight Betwixt! looks like a decent stab at a hit but it turns out to be an extremely risky affair.
Ian McFarlane has written the book, the lyrics and the music. And he’s the director. Seasoned musical producers never concentrate so much responsibility in one pair of hands, so McFarlane needs to be better than the experts to succeed.
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