402. Pre-theatre Dinner At Purnell’s Plates.

 

  For the third time in six days it’s off to the theatre I go. But now, back in Birmingham, this time to the Birmingham Repertory Theatre to see the theatre version of Bruce Robinson’s sublimely comic, excruciatingly enjoyable classic film set in the dying days of the 1960s. Withnail And I. Expectations are high, after all the Royal Shakespeare Company, with its usual license to bowdlerise to the Nth degree, has not been let loose on this gem, worthy of Shakespeare himself and indeed quoting as it does from Hamlet at the very end of it as Withnail is left alone, fated perhaps never to play the Dane.

 But, as I wrote above, expectations are high, anticipation is electric and  a pre-theatre dinner is needed though I have no intention of demanding, to accompany it, the finest wines known to man. It is some time since I have eaten at Purnell’s Plates in Edmund Street, a short walk from the Rep, and it seems like an ideal place to start the evening which, incidentally, is warm, dry and pleasingly seasonal for late spring day. And so to Purnell’s Plates, to be greeted by Adrien Garnier, restaurant manager at Purnell’s, sitting outside in the early evening warmth with, I expect, other staff prior to heading off for Cornwall Street prior to evening service there

  I am shown to my table by the painting of the bull which reminds me of just how many bulls there are in the city. And so to the menu.

     Switching from present to past tense, I ordered four dishes from the menu which proved to be a little more than my advancingly elderly stomach had full room for but my mouth and taste buds felt differently from my stomach and welcomed all-comers. First to arrive at the table was a plate of nicely crispy and robustly flavoured cheese and basil croquetas and I set about demolishing these little gems with pleasurable gusto washed down with a complementary glass of cava and then some Spanish beer.

   Then, along came four beautifully meaty and happily spicy beef and pork albondigas served with a keenly tasty tomato sauce and some patatas bravas which did not have so much heat to them as I would have liked though the finely shaved cheese on top of them gave them added flavour. Finally along came a lovely piece of pan-fried sea bream - its meat nicely cooked and snow-white - with saffron and garlic and a couple of rather insubstantial potatoes and two or three segments of sliced, sweet piquillo peppers. 

  I eschewed the irritating deconstructed crème Catalan which I was surprised to find had hung on to its place on the menu and instead opted for the Basque cheesecake. This was sensibly sized and a fair representation of the dish and, after it, I was ready to amble along to Centenary Square to see the play.

  It took a while to accept that the two very frantic young men on the stage were Withnail and Marwood though they spoke almost the very same lines as Richard E Grant and Paul McGann did in the movie. At times Withnail was more Bertie Wooster than Grant’s far more subtle, more deeply upper crust, viciously cynical rendition of the part and poor Marwood just was not beautiful enough. But the lads did their best and made me laugh at times though that was more to do with the crushingly hilarious script than the acting to be fair. And how could the actor playing Uncle Monty, a fraction of Richard’s Griffith’s scene-filling bulk, ever hope to fully win over a Withnail and I aficionado when a picture of the salacious, predatory film version of Uncle Monty is lodged firmly and eternally in the mind’s eye?

  But it was an entertaining evening with great efforts put into the costumes and the scenery and scene-changing remarkable. The Rep had certainly put in the necessary effort on this one and it showed.