I’ve witnessed two performances over the past seven days that could hardly have been more different. There was classical Greek drama, a University College London student production of Euripides’s Hippolytus in the Bloomsbury Theatre, and there was a chap named Wisconsin taking all his clothes off in a pub.
We’ll call him Wisconsin, anyway, because he is certainly American but possibly reluctant for his stripping to receive national publicity. The pub, though, can be named: the famous White Swan in Limehouse, East London. When, decades ago, it began its weekly Mr Amateur Strip Night on a Wednesday evening, London’s Docklands was a dark wasteland, much of Limehouse was derelict, and most of the population were poor white East Enders. Today the blazing lights of Canary