Nicole schreibt...

Couldn't stay away from London for long, could I? It was strange to be returning to Heathrow so soon, but at least I wasn't facing another long-distance flight to the end of the world this time. Instead I took the tube to my favourite abode in Pimlico, where I found I couldn't check in yet. So I just dumped my baggage and went to the West End to secure my ticket for the evening and do some shopping. The first show on my list and also the main reason why a trip in spring had been a must was Anything Goes, the successful transfer from the RNT to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane starring the ever-so gorgeous John Barrowman as Billy Crocker and one of my favourite leading ladies Sally Ann Triplett as Reno Sweeney. Now Row AA may not give you the best sight on the stage for big dancing routines but you do get to see a lot of John B. in close-up! Cole Porter's immortal music, many great one-liners and a highly energetic choreography still make for a great evening out seventy years after the show first opened - a stark contrast to a certain other musical featuring an ocean liner that sank without a trace in Hamburg not long ago. The cast was excellent and remembering Sally Ann Triplett from the wonderful but small "Rags" at the Bridewell I was really happy to see this talented lady starring in a big West End production at last. Running away with the show whenever he was on stage was Simon Day as Lord Evelyn Oakleigh who had the audience in stitches with "The Gypsy in me". The gorgeous Mr Barrowman was great, too, but I did realize that his biggest asset is his looks and not his voice. But who is complaining? On Saturday morning I first queued on the matinee side of the TKTS booth and then at the evening side before being able to hit Oxford Street and shop for shoes and summer dresses. The 50's are back with a vengeance and boy do I love these dresses! At 1pm I met my London-based friend Erika at Dress Circle and we went to have lunch together before seeing "Thoroughly Modern Millie" at the Shaftesbury Theatre. I had been looking forward to this show in particular because a friend of mine had been gushing about it for so long. Now there was all this fuss about B-list celebrity Amanda Holden starring as Millie in London and whether she could cut it or not and many people said that her understudy Donna Steele was better. So I guess I should consider myself lucky that Donna was on for this performance and it struck me quickly that Millie is one of these extremely demanding roles that require 150% concentration every second she's on stage, so unless you have an excellent leading lady, the show is doomed to failure. However Donna did a great job and I found the whole show extremely entertaining, particularly Anita Dobson as Mrs Meers, the evil landlady who tries to ship her lodgers off to China as white slaves. I also loved the choreography and the sheer fun the show conveyed - just like "Anything Goes" a wonderful show for sheer escapism that left me wishing for more good old-fashioned shows like this. After the show we had a coffee at Caffe Nero in Seven Dials, just opposite the Cambridge Theatre where "Jerry Springer - The Opera" is running with a success that's beyond me. But while the cast recording did nothing to make me rush for a ticket I suppose I'll have to see the show live eventually before I can dismiss it or be pleasantly surprised by it. For now I don't feel like I'm missing anything when I give this show a wide berth. Show for the evening was even more retro than "Anything Goes" or "Millie": I was off to the Savoy Theatre for "The Pirates of Penzance", a musical that's rather an operetta and first opened in 1879, in the days of Queen Victoria. I cannot say I'm overly keen on Gilbert & Sullivan's ancient shows, but never having seen one live I had wanted to give it a try for a long time and especially to see the Pirates, a mix of my old love for musicals and my new love for all things piratical. I can't say I was bored stiff by what I saw, but I realized more than once that it was a different kind of show that entertained the masses back then. There was a lot of good-natured fun, some nice tunes and the gorgeous Hadley Fraser as pirate apprentice Frederic to look at. The current Savoy season offers "Pirates" as well as "Peter Pan" and both seem to be a star vehicle for a fellow called Anthony Head, whom I didn't know from television and who didn't impress me at all as the pirate captain. May be that I'm thinking Johnny Depp now, but Head had not only a terrible hairdo but also the appearance of a fading queen with too much fake-tan and ugly earrings. On the upside were excellent performances by Kathryn Evans, another underrated leading lady, as Ruth and newcomer Elin Wyn Lewis. What was fascinating was the audience's obvious love for the show and response to even the weakest joke. It seemed that everyone (but me) was familiar with the show and had probably done it at some am dram society at some point in their lives. And it was fascinating to think that we were seeing the same show people would have seen 120 years ago in a totally different London. Overall it was okay - no more, no less. On Sunday I did what I had been longing to do for a while, return to Camden Lock Market. Yes I know that these days the market is open seven days a week and not longer on Sundays only, but even so I usually feel that I don't have the time to go all the way to Camden and lose myself among the countless stalls and shops. It's still a fantastic place to look for the latest fashion and gadgets as well as hippie clothes, esoteric stuff from the East or antiques and we spent about five hours there and didn't even enter many of the shops or stopped to browse at many stalls. I bought a pack of 120 incense sticks for just one pound and a gorgeous Indian scarf, but resisted the huge Buddha wall hanging. A long bus ride took us straight from Camden to Pimlico, going through the London University area, the West End and Whitehall, throwing me back to the days when I was a teenage tourist on sightseeing tours with my school class. The evening brought me to the West End one last time to see the "Notes from New York" concert at the Donmar Warehouse. Virtually everyone to whom I mentioned having bought a ticket for the concert went "oooh, I wish I could see that" but personally I was sitting in the tiny theatre a bit puzzled, not sure really why everyone had been so keen on this. Four immensely talented young performers (Paul Spicer, Julie Atherton, Debbie Kurup and Craig Purnell) presented songs from budding young Broadway composers like Jason Robert Brown, Willian Finn and the late Jonathan Larson. While I love Larson's "Rent" the magic of "Last Five Years" has eluded me so far and I hadn't even heard a single note of Finn's work. Now to be fair this is certainly my own fault - I prefer lush orchestral scores with violins, trumpets and harps or if that isn't available at least a rock band with keyboards, guitars and drums (though having said that, I always loved "The Fantasticks" which relies on a piano and a harp only). Anyway, what struck me about the selection of songs for the concert (and the shows these songs are taken from) that today's Off-Broadway shows seem to be the total opposite of what's on Broadway (and in the West End). Big shows are all meaningless fun these days, often using old pop music or recycling old movies. The only new musical in the true sense of the word in the last 2-3 years is for me Stephen Schwartz's "Wicked", but that's neither here or there. Off-Broadway meanwhile deals with "life as it is" and the concert often felt like a live sung-through adaption of typical sitcoms like Frasier, Seinfeld orFriends with introspective navel gazing on relationships gone wrong or hilarious monologues, the best one Julie Atherton's "I'm breaking down" from the musical "Falsettos". The funny songs worked best anyway, while some of the ballads clearly lacked musical accompaniement. The four performers were all excellent, though Debbie Kurup was outstanding for me - what a voice and charisma! I wish I had seen her as Mimi. On the whole the concert was okay, but in my opinion not really worth the excitement. Some songs were ripped from their context and left me wondering about the show or the events in the show leading up to this song and in the second act I began to tire of all the moaning about "modern life" and its issues. PS: Why do I ALWAYS sit in front of the one irritating member of the audience who thinks just clapping doesn't show enough appreciation and hence starts to whoop and holler after every song?! All in all it was a pleasant trip that had been made worthwhile by Anything Goes and Millie and the Monsoon summer collection, but I also realized that it's been a long time since London gave me this exciting buzz that came from seeing one excellent show after another.  I don't blame the shows, mind you. I know it's a change in myself, a change in priorities - I don't longer feel the need to see every new show in town and I can't get as excited anymore as I used to be. These days it gives me a far bigger kick to explore the sights of a new town or country, the churches/temples, the museums, the monuments and also the shops. I was lucky that all shows have been available at TKTS this time, but even so I found myself thinking that the £25 for a musical ticket would have bought me another gorgeous skirt from Dorothy Perkins. I will always keep returning to London because it's still my favourite town and because I have got friends there now and there will always be shows I'm interested in seeing, but I suppose it will be less trips in future and only in combination with other things like last year's outing to Wales and Bath.