A Right Royale Tea and Show

How do you fancy sharing tea time with a gin-soaked aristocrat and her gambler husband Lord Marmaduke Right who have drunk and bet away their fortune and whose rat-infested stately home is falling down around their ears?

You’ll be joined by their butler, lawyer and daughter at Crawley House for an afternoon of tea and ‘immersive’ musical comedy theatre set in the 1920s.

A Right Royal Tea at Charing Cross - How do you fancy sharing tea time with a gin-soaked aristocrat and her gambler husband Lord Marmaduke Right who have drunk and bet away their fortune and whose rat-infested stately home is falling down around their ears? — A Right Royale Tea at The Amba

By that overworked term ‘immersive’ you’ll learn aristo speak for hello (HAIR, AIR, LAIR) without moving your lips; play a parlour game of Heads and Tails and sing Rule Britannia with Lady Caroline in full throttle.

If A Right Royale Tea is not quite your cuppa you could just enjoy a spiffing traditional afternoon tea in the rather grand setting of the Amba Hotel, Charing Cross, all pale pink and glittering chandeliers.

Tea was served with dainty finger sandwiches of cucumber and mint, egg mayonnaise and cress, and smoked salmon. Heavy-handed jokes accompanied sultana scones, baked with a lighter touch, with clotted cream and strawberry jam. The rather thin plot thickened with lemon tartlets, mini Victoria sponge and cherry chocolate pebbles.

We were attending the preview performance of A Right Royale Tea, which runs every Sunday from 23rd June 2019. The theatricals are an amusing add-on to the real star of the show – what was on our plates and in our cups.

I like my tea weak. But not my script, which needs some robust editing. And the music, apart from a startling aria, O Mio Babbino Caro from Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi, Lady Caroline giving it her all, could be given more welly.

My companion felt the theatre aspect was still a work in progress. ‘More of a farcical Keep Calm and Carry On over tea,’ she reckoned.

‘I’m not sure if paying clients will be so willingly led up the garden path of dramatic license. However, the delightful cakes and sandwiches will definitely fill some of the gaps.’

Performances take place at the Amba Hotel, Charing Cross, London, every Sunday afternoon, 2:30pm until 5pm, until the end of August. Tickets cost £69.95 per adult, £59.95 for children under 12 and £64.95 student and senior citizen concessions, with an option to upgrade to the prosecco package at £77.50 per adult.

Tickets at www.ARightRoyaleTea.co.uk

Gill Martin

Gill Martin is an award winning travel writer and former Fleet Street journalist – Daily Mail reporter, Daily Express feature writer and Sunday Mirror Woman's Editor. She is a freelance writer for national newspapers from the Financial Times and Daily Telegraph to tabloids, magazines, regional newspapers and websites. After a six month career break after the Indian Ocean tsunami where she volunteered as a communications consultant in Banda Aceh, Indonesia for Plan, the children's charity, she is now focused on travel. From skiing everywhere from Kashmir to Argentina, Morocco to Turkey, North America and all over Europe; snow shoeing in Canada; captain of the GB team of the Ski Club of International Journalists; whitewater rafting down the Zambezi; electric mountain biking in Switzerland and cycling in Portugal; Kenyan and South African safaris; riding elephants in India and horses in Brazil; paint balling in Romania; opera and archeology in Serbia; Caribbean snorkelling; sampling food and wine in Italy.

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