6.30 P.M. THE IVY

6.30 P.M. Outside it’s a damp, chilly evening. A shower has left the streets slick and varnished. The Ivy’s blue-moon, stained-glass window shimmers in the gutter like a little literary pun on George Orwell’s impossibly perfect hostelry, the Moon in a Puddle. Opposite, The Mousetrap, lit up and boastful as the longest-running play in the world, prepares for its umpteenth performance before yet another crowd of bussed-in vacuum-cleaner assemblers from the Midlands and a smattering of spectacularly unadventurous Americans ready to be astounded that the murderer is... No, it isn’t in the spirit of the Ivy to spoil even a tired theatrical moment. But when Richard Attenborough took his first bow after the first performance the Ivy was already an old trouper. These two dowagers of ‘Theatreland’, as the street signs wince-makingly put it, bask in each other’s reflected neon.