The totally brutal destruction of Gaza continues. The knowledge that there is a large natural gas deposit off the Coast which would come under the jurisdiction of any Palestinian state which included Gaza lends a Job-like cynicism as the body count grows. There are global murmurs of discontent but only the South Africans and the Irish are blunt in their condemnation. New Zealand hiccups apologetically.

But it is play week, a week each year when we resurrect and perform a classic within seven days. This year it is Bruce Mason’s The End of the Golden Weather, so it is back to the 1930s and the coming of age of a lad with artistic urges. It is an age of seeming innocence, despite the Depression, with the only blot the lunatics who need to be locked away. Netanyahu? Biden?

Story telling is a complex task, to include description and to play the myriad characters – curiously Cubist in nature – even though it is the most ancient of art forms. So, the world faded away as a singular intent took over.

Of course there is the fallacy of art – those orchestras in the death camps. Will, one day, people make theatre out of what’s happening in Gaza? If so, why? And then the diplomacy. One could make theatre out of the diplomacy. Those daily phone calls between Netanyahu and Biden, perhaps becoming sterner, each with their scripts concocted by advisors. What a task for a scribe.

Before the performances are over and life returns to normal. Except in Gaza there is no normality, nor likely to be, for the gas exploration leases have been let and the aim is to supply Europe so that it is no longer reliant on Russia. Politics is, as Machiavelli wrote, a despicable practice.

At least theatre has the grace to disappear, leaving only a memory.