The Gatehouse, Highgate - Opera at the pub

Opera at the pub isn't something I've encountered before, but I'm open minded. Opera at Wetherspoons is taking things a little too far. But that's where I was on Saturday. The theatre above The Gatehouse in Highgate (1 North Road, N6 4BD, Tel: 020 8340 8054, map) was hosting a run of Don Giovanni, and my mate Ben was playing the lead.
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This neatly coincided with the ongoing Wetherspoon's Real Ale Festival. Our mutual friend Quirke's always mediating in arguments between Ben and myself. One old favourite is whether opera has contributed more to human culture than beer. As a theatre critic and a beer lover, Quirke sees both sides. Saturday was to be the day the two would come to together.

The Gatehouse is a rare beast in the 'Spoons estate: it's a proper pub, and doesn't look like a cross-channel ferry lounge. The mock-Tudor building once guarded the entrance to London from Middlesex, and today the building is split between the boroughs of Haringey and Camden. Upstairs was used as a courtroom before conversion into a theatre in 1895.

We spent the afternoon in the beer garden before moving upstairs to get cultural. I devoted the session to Elgood's Black Dog, a fantastic 3.6% abv dark mild with a distinctive and moreish smoky flavour. Lovely as the beer and the weather was, five pints in the sun isn't perhaps the best preparation for three and a half hours of opera with one short interval.

Don Giovanni's easy to get along with, and the jokey English translation raised a laugh from this half-cut philistine. Ben clearly enjoyed being a philandering Spaniard. It was all fun and games until I began to shift uneasily in my seat, as the next stage of the beer's journey began. The performances were good all round, but in my state every high note and warble began to jar. Each time they finished singing, I prayed for the interval. It didn't come. There's only so long you can hold out, as Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe found out. In the end I had to make a move. I picked what passed for an opportune moment, and crashed from my seat and along the back row, down the stairs, through the pub and into those hallowed porcelain halls.

If you were disturbed by howls of relief emanating from North London on Saturday evening, I offer you my sincerest apologies.

Do opera and beer sit well together? No. Sadly they don't.
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Information:

1. Upstairs at the Gatehouse, the highest London theatre above sea level, is online here.
2. Elgood's & Sons are is a Cambridgeshire brewing company. The North Brink brewery opened in 1795, though the Elgoods only took over in 1878. You can read more here.