A much bela­ted part 2 of time spent in the West End and other fun pla­ces, I think I was meant to post this around Decem­ber 20th, looks like that didn’t hap­pen. I roun­ded off the last post with a trip to see Zorro.

Next stop Alan Ayckbourn’s trio of plays “Living Together”, “Table Man­ners” and “Round and Round the Gar­den” (seen in that order) as part of “The Nor­man Con­quests” in the round at the Old Vic — a thea­tre trans­for­med for a 360 degree vie­wing expe­rience. Being under 25 offers us the nice little perk of much dis­coun­ted tic­kets, £20 for each play ins­tead of £40–60, or the­rea­bouts, a bar­gain. The six strong cast con­sis­ted of Ame­lia Bull­more, Jes­sica Hynes, Stephen Man­gan, Ben Miles, Paul Rit­ter and Amanda Root.

Going into “Living Together”, Sam, Jo and I weren’t sure what to expect, our seats were at the rear of the audi­to­rium, where the stage would nor­mally sit, but ins­tead a cir­cu­lar tier of seats stood, car­ved into the back. We were inc­re­dibly close to the cir­cu­lar stage with its ‘model village come woo­den cur­tain’ and light fur­ni­ture set. The three plays inter­min­gle in time, each can stan­da­lone but together they form a big­ger pic­ture, por­tra­ying dif­fe­rent nuan­ces and natu­res of the cha­rac­ters whilst each inc­re­dibly reveals a sig­ni­fi­cant plot point subtly but rea­lis­ti­cally refe­ren­ced in the other two. (Reg wan­de­ring into the front room, “Ah there it is”, picks up the bin and walks out again).

The sto­ries are deeply tra­gic; three siblings, two unhap­pily married and the other sin­gle yet equally unhappy. The other three cast mem­bers make up their spouses/possible future part­ners whilst a sick and elderly mother and her pro­mis­cuous past resi­des out of sight, ups­tairs and bedrid­den. Nor­man is all set to run away for a roman­tic wee­kend with his wife’s sis­ter Annie, Annie’s poten­tial love inte­rest — Tom, the dim wit­ted Vet, belie­ves she is going on holi­day alone and that this is partly his fault; Annie’s brother Reg and inter­fe­ring wife Sarah arrive to look after mother for the wee­kend, in Annie’s absence. Norman’s wife Ruth remains una­wa­res, but isn’t without sus­pi­cion. Cue the start of all three plays and without wishing to reveal too much; the home made pars­nip wine, Reg’s cle­verly devi­sed board game he wants ever­yone to play, Norman’s desire to make ever­yone happy, Tom’s com­plete befudd­le­ment, the rug, the silence at Break­fast, soup and salad, sea­ting arran­ge­ments, Ruth’s misin­ter­pre­ted advice in the gar­den, the cat stuck in the tree, the tom­foo­lery and East Grins­ted — and as the family tears itself apart you’ll laugh with every turn, every reve­la­tion, every remark and your jaw will ache from the smile plas­te­red across your face.

For Table Man­ners and Round and Round the Gar­den we were sea­ted at the top in the middle, a little further from the action but still a great view. Ori­gi­nally we’d deci­ded to only go to one of the three, but on the strength of Living Together — which we now believe was the best star­ting place — we boo­ked the next two. If I had to put them in order of favou­ri­tes I’d put the Gar­den epi­sode first, clo­sely follo­wed by Living Together and then Table Manners.

Our taste for plays, come­dies, Ayck­bourn and the Old Vic have been sti­mu­la­ted and we’re ready for more.

Here’s the best shot I could get of the cir­cu­lar stage from where we were:

Before the shows we ate at the Ban­ga­lore Express (with its dou­ble dec­ker sea­ting arran­ge­ment) and Yo Sushi (where we used our buy 5 pla­tes get 5 free vouchers), both of which are in wal­king dis­tance from the Old Vic.

Follo­wing the Gar­den, which we saw on a Satur­day after­noon in Decem­ber, we grab­bed the tube to Hyde Park to visit the Win­ter Won­der­land with all of its Christ­mas­time goo­dies and German-like mar­kets. War­ming up with a tasty steak bur­ger we aim­lessly peru­sed the stalls, trying out the mulled wine, the can­died nuts, mini dutch pan­ca­kes in cho­co­late, fun hats and Ger­man sau­sa­ges. Without rea­li­sing it had reached 9pm we mean­de­red towards Covent Gar­den before res­ting at “Fire and Stone”, a fan­tas­tic stone-oven piz­ze­ria where every pizza is based on a world city, I had a:

Marra­kech // £8.95
Cumin spi­ced ground lamb, moz­za­re­lla, mint yoghurt sauce, green oli­ves, rai­sins & sli­ced red onion drizz­led with chi­lli oil.

Worth every penny.

The Ballet

The next big ven­ture into Lon­don for Sam and I was to the Coli­seum to see the English Natio­nal Ballet per­for­ming Slee­ping Beauty; my first foray into the world of ballet and dance. Approaching the night slee­pi­fied and docile, I wasn’t loo­king for­ward to the three hour per­for­mance des­pite pep­ping up with a home-made bur­ger from a nearby Moroc­can place off Lei­ces­ter Square.

Howe­ver, when the cur­tain lif­ted, the surrea­lism of a 3 hour show without a sin­gle spo­ken word, not even for the inter­val, slowly daw­ned on me, and with it I became quietly engros­sed in the beau­ti­ful dance and skill before me, the miming tech­ni­ques used for the plot mostly going over my head but for a few obvious exam­ples. My slum­ber had me all but­te­red up and I left amongst the extraor­di­na­rily posh and the dis­pro­por­tio­nate num­ber of rich attrac­tive girls into the cold win­ter air, with scarf and glo­ves, ready for Christmas.

Living in St Albans I’ve recently taken the oppor­tu­nity to see as much thea­tre as pos­si­ble, and now I have a cou­ple of spare minu­tes bet­ween all the shows, holi­day and tra­ve­ling, I’ll write a bit about them all.

Les Mise­ra­bles

I’ve long been a great hater of musi­cals that sing every. sin­gle. word. ♫ I’m going to get the milk ♫, that sort of thing. By that logic I should abso­lu­tely des­pise Les Mis’, lis­te­ning to the songs briefly befo­rehand cer­tainly sug­ges­ted I would. Our seats were upper circle front row, I’d bought them with my sis­ter for my mum’s birth­day; we had a good view and I sat back unsure what to expect, ‘Look Down and see’.

Ahead of me the sto­ries of Val­jean, Fan­tine, Javert, Cosette, Epo­nine et al unfol­ded; the repea­ting musi­cal theme resoun­ded deep and a phe­no­me­nal per­for­mance by Drew Sarich colou­red me impres­sed, with ‘On My Own’ hear­tren­dingly sung by Epo­nine (Cas­sie Comp­ton) fully engros­sing me, for the first time, within a musi­cal love story. This was and still is the best musi­cal per­for­mance I have seen and until that point I had very little faith in the genre as a whole.

I left wan­ting more.

Mar­gue­rite

I had already seen Miss Sai­gon, although I do believe it wasn’t one of the best per­for­man­ces, I didn’t overly enjoy it. It pro­bably deser­ves a second chance with my now rene­wed inte­rest. Mar­gue­rite was a new musi­cal with songs by Michel Legrand (see Umbre­llas of Cher­bourg!) and the hook, lyrics by Alain Bou­blil and Claude-Michel Schonberg.

The show, music and per­for­man­ces were all bit­terly disap­poin­ting; the lea­ding sin­ging male came across as an over zea­lous ste­reoty­pi­cal stage fella for which we did not emote. It was all a little lac­klus­ter, and no doubt others agreed — lea­ding to the shows pre­ma­ture end in Sep­tem­ber. Luc­kily an overly chirpy and enter­tai­ning train con­duc­tor kept us happy on the way home; if only they were all as happy as him.

Fat Pig

Jo, Sam and I saw Fat Pig in its first English incar­na­tion at the Tra­fal­gar stu­dios with Kris Marshall and Robert Webb. The comedy has a sim­ple pre­mise; some guy begins dating a fat girl and must face his work collea­gues and their taunts — the ‘obses­sed with looks’ ex-date and the crude and woma­ni­zing buddy.

Big Spoi­lers now. The first half revol­ves around Tom and Helen, the libra­rian, mee­ting, laughs a plenty and smi­les all around — an hila­rious comedy as billed. With the second half comes the to and fro of a rela­tionship, the ups and downs and ine­vi­ta­ble ques­tions about the future which revolve around Helen mee­ting Tom’s work mates; the comedy sof­tens you up and keeps you con­tent in the happy ending realm of posi­tive mes­sage story­te­lling — before a long and quiet con­ver­sa­tion on the beach punches you in the gut, rips out your heart and splat­ters it on the wall, brin­ging you straight back to rea­lity and ending the show in dark­ness. Abso­lu­tely brilliant.

I hear­tily recom­mend this, though can­not vouch for the new lineup or venue.

39 Steps

Another comedy, we got tic­kets cheap for this one in the stalls, and thought why not. None of us had actually seen the movie, so we didn’t know quite what to expect, espe­cially with only four cast mem­bers pla­ying the role of many. It tur­ned out to be a slaps­tick affair with very cle­ver prop jokes, cos­tume chan­ges and role switching; a good laugh and another recom­men­ded night out.

Ave­nue Q

Sam and I saw this one on our wee­kend to the Hox­ton Hotel,

Middle of the middle in the stalls we watched the well prai­sed Ave­nue Q as the Gary Cole­man refe­ren­ces whis­ked over our heads and the ‘grab your dick and dou­ble click‘ line resoun­ded. Though we enjo­yed it, the abun­dant acc­laim meant it did not meet our high expectations.

This adult pup­pet comedy, although making us laugh, really didn’t grab us as we had thought and hoped it might. A tad disap­poin­ting, it might have been the unders­tu­dies but pro­bably just all the hype surroun­ding it.

Rain Man

Another per­for­mance caught on the Hox­ton wee­kend, lucky enough to get tic­kets on the day,

Neither of us had seen the Dus­tin Hoff­man movie, we went in without any expec­ta­tions and without grounds for com­pa­ri­son. We left abso­lu­tely stun­ned — wow; the play was bri­lliant with God­ley and Hart­nett supre­mely lea­ving us on ten­der hooks. This was the first straight up play we’d seen together and no doubt we’ll be back for more of the same.

It is very much a love story, a comedy and a drama. I must remem­ber to now watch the movie (adding to my Love­Film list). I’m not sure how we would have reac­ted to it had we seen the movie. To no sur­prise, a large pro­por­tion of the audience were female. I do agree that Hart­nett is a stud, even in The Black Dah­lia with its ste­llar cast, which I caught last night, a poor attempt at a film noir.

Zorro

Zorro is the most recent of musi­cals I have seen after Sam grab­bed four tic­kets for £40; this ope­ned ear­lier in the year and Matt Rawle plays the lead and once again I had no expec­ta­tions or even a clue as to the story. The show is none too serious (des­pite the bri­lliant ‘Man behind the Mask’ num­ber) and comes accom­pa­nied with fla­menco gypsy dan­cing, heel stom­ping, sword fights, fire and The Gypsy Kings (see Bam­bo­leo); ‘a fun filled romp’ some tabloid review might say and it cer­tainly was. With a dance and clap encore I left with dan­cing feet com­ple­tely satis­fied with my night out, bar the Gypsy King tracks that loo­ped around my cra­nium for the remain­der of the night.

If you want some plain old fun in Lon­don, I recom­mend Zorro the musical!

The Hox­ton Hotel (‘the urban lodge’) in Lon­don recently had a sale, where a lucky few could purchase rooms for £1 a night or £29 a night. Most came away with nothing, but Sam was lucky enough to not only get a room, but two con­se­cu­tive nights on the wee­kend of her birth­day! Fantastic!

Said wee­kend star­ted last Fri­day, we each took the day off and took our quick and usual route into the cen­tre; mee­ting outside Lei­ces­ter Square, cases in tow, ready to be tou­rists for a cou­ple of days. After apple juice and lunch in St James’ park we took the Northern Line to Old Street and chec­ked in, elec­tri­fied by the overwhel­ming tren­di­ness that is both the hotel and surroun­ding area.

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