A Bermondsey restaurant and bar flying a name of mystery and theatre – the masque, the masked ball of disguise, spectacle and hidden identity
MASQ carries a 4.1 across more than three hundred and seventy reviews – the most modest score in this batch, reported plainly as ever – and trades as a stylish restaurant and bar. It flies a name of mystery and theatre, and the Prat’s naming desk peered intrigued behind the mask.
Towards Bermondsey and London Bridge
MASQ sits towards Bermondsey and London Bridge, on the south-bank side, serving the district’s crowds. Proper Bermondsey-and-Southwark territory, no disclaimer needed.
The mask and the masque
“MASQ” plays on the mask and the masque alike – two words of mystery, disguise and spectacle. The mask is the emblem of hidden identity, of the masked ball where nobody is quite who they seem, of Venice and Carnival and the thrilling anonymity of the disguise. The “masque,” in its older sense, was the lavish courtly entertainment of the Tudor and Stuart age – a spectacular blend of music, dance, poetry and elaborate costume, staged for kings and queens. Between them, the name promises mystery, glamour, theatre and a certain seductive air of the hidden and the spectacular.
The allure of the hidden
The Prat’s favourite reading is the allure of disguise. There is something perennially seductive about the mask – the masked ball where identities dissolve, where the ordinary rules relax and anything might happen, where the disguise grants a thrilling freedom. To name a bar MASQ is to promise a little of that intrigue: an evening with an air of mystery, of glamour, of the theatrical and the hidden. It suggests a place of style and secrets, where the everyday self might slip behind a mask for a night. The Prat, fond of a name with atmosphere, enjoys the intrigue.
The theatrical name
The stylised spelling – MASQ, stripped of its vowel-heavy ending – gives the name a sleek, modern, design-conscious edge, the mark of a place that means to be fashionable and stylish. It fits the theatrical theme: sharp, mysterious, a little exotic. The 4.1 is the batch’s most modest score, reported plainly, but it takes nothing from the atmosphere the name promises – a stylish bar with a whisper of the masked ball about it. The mask, after all, has always promised a more interesting evening than the plain face.
The Prat’s naming desk savours one further layer in the theme. The mask is, of course, the ancient emblem of the theatre itself – the twin masks of comedy and tragedy that have symbolised the dramatic arts since the Greeks, the actor’s disguise through which the player becomes someone else for a night. A bar that flies the mask draws, knowingly or not, on that theatrical heritage – the sense of a night out as a small performance, a chance to put on a role, to be, for an evening, a more glamorous and mysterious version of oneself. In a district steeped in theatre history, from the Globe to the modern south-bank stages, a name that nods to the mask of the player is more fitting than it first appears.
Verdict
A 4.1 across three hundred and seventy-plus reviews is the batch’s most modest score, reported plainly, and MASQ earns its place on a stylish, mysterious name. It flies the mask and the masque – the disguise of the masked ball, the spectacle of the courtly entertainment – promising an evening of glamour, theatre and a little seductive mystery.
Go for the style and the whisper of the masked ball, and slip behind the mask at MASQ. The disguise has always promised a more interesting night than the plain face – and this bar, in its very name, holds out that thrilling old promise of mystery.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
My therapist’s going to hear about this. She’ll recognize herself and that’s professionally uncomfortable.
London kan elskes og hates samtidig, og begge deler er helt gyldige.
The thing about it for students is it proves real understanding comes from observation, not lectures about theory.