I have another theatrical recommendation for everyone today- an absolutely fascinating one. John and I went to watch The Duchess Of Malfi last night. Once again it was his suggestion, and I had never heard of it. However, John told me where to go, and I met him at the Trafalgar Theatre on Whitehall at half past seven yesterday evening.

What I found myself watching was fascinating. It is essentially a seventeenth century play about a woman, The Duchess, who falls in love with Antonio, her steward, but her brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal, forbid her from marrying him. They hire Bosola to spy on her, and he eventually discovers that she is pregnant. The Duchess and Antonio then elope and have three children in secret. The thing is, I didn’t know anything about it before going into the theatre, so because the actors were all in modern costume, I was at a complete loss about when the action was set. The dialogue was a strange mixture of antiquated and contemporary, with even a few elements that iambic pentameter, so I was never totally certain what I was listening to. The performance was a fusion of such a vast array of elements that I found myself totally captivated: this was contemporary theatre at its finest, somehow seeming both Shakespearean and modern at the same time.

As I rode the Jubilee Line home last night, I once again felt overwhelmingly lucky to live in this awesome city, where I can go to a theatre of an evening and watch such beautiful, captivating things. I was left intrigued by the fusion of archaic and contemporary which had both baffled and fascinated me; and by the way in which the play seemed to transgress time, seeming both historic and modern at once. It had drawn me in, reminding me how fascinating such performances could be. Best of all, though, it left me ravenous for more.