Films, theatre and music

All sorts of events took place in Oxford. In addition to films and concerts there were performances of plays, musicals etc. There were Phoenix cinemas as well as ABC theatres in the town. I quite often went to the cinema, partly to improve my English, when good films or ones which had had good reviews or were interesting were shown in Oxford. I have already mentioned the film about Gandhi. I enjoyed the 007 series of Octopussy films and was interested to see David Lean's Passage to India. I thought the latter very well directed and I shall never forget the fine performance of Peggy Ashcroft as the leading lady in the film. Once, a friend of mine from a certain country, who was a student at Merton, invited some of us to see a film produced in his country which he, himself, had not yet seen. But it turned out to be pretty incomprehensible and he kept on apologizing for inflicting the film on us, although you can never really tell whether a film is good or bad unless you see it for yourself.

I went a number of times to the Oxford Playhouse which was run by the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS). The OUDS, incidentally, elected me as Honorary President. On one occasion after the performance I went to the reception attended by former members of the OUDS. There were many famous people there, but unfortunately I did not know who was who and could not put names to faces. I learnt at this time that Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud, Richard Burton, Peter Brook and other famous stage people had close connections with Oxford, even if they were not necessarily members of the OUDS. After I had returned home in 1988 OUDS came to Japan to give some performances: on that occasion I was able to enjoy a performance of Shakespeare's As you like it at the Globe theatre in Shibuya. It was a very good performance and made me feel nostalgic about my time at Oxford.

I have already mentioned that when I was staying at Colonel and Mrs Hall's I had been to Stratford-on-Avon and seen Henry VIII.