Nicole schreibt...

This time my London trip was split in half - since I had been in my favorite city in late April for the last time and had been sitting on my "Hamlet" ticket for over a year, I decided to not do "just another London trip" but finally go out into the west to see Salisbury, Stonehenge and Glastonbury, something I had wanted to do for almost 20 years and just never got around to till now. You can read about the actual trip on my travel page... this is as usual a sum up of my time in London and the shows I saw this time. Thanks to stupid Lufthansa cancelling the mid-day flight I had to change to the morning flight. You'd think I'd be happy to have a few more hours in London but I normally book the mid-day flight for a reason. Having to get up early to get to the airport in time I was already tired by the time I got to London. And I booked the new cheapo hotel chain Travelodge for the first time, since I got pretty good prices with them for once (they sell hotel rooms like bargain airlines sell tickets - book years ahead and you get awesome prices, book at short notice and they rip you off). Travelodge won't let you check in till 3pm though and not even store luggage, so I was pretty much stuck. I left my luggage at Liverpool St. Station for a whopping £8, then walked around the area to check out the famous Petticoat Lane market, which was really just a dingy street with very cheap clothes, and Spitalfields Market which I enjoyed more - apart from trendy fashion and jewellry they had several stalls selling old vinyl records (and CDs) and walking around there felt like a walk down memory lane. At 2pm I pretty much gave up since I was so tired, fetched my backpack and went to the Travelodge Liverpool Street, which is just a short walk through a very pretty area from the station. I couldn't check in, so I just sat around with closed eyes for 45mins till I could get into my room, then went to bed there, but couldn't really sleep. If more hours in London are just a miserable hanging around and feeling tired all day I much prefer to stick with the mid-day flight thank you very much. I hope Lufthansa will bring it back after the summer vacation or I'd seriously have to consider another airline (yea, and that'll probably be bloody Germanwings, ugh). After a shower I finally went into the West End and got off the tube on Oxford Circus - baaad idea, because I stepped out right in the middle of the summer sales on Oxford Street, so I couldn't resist a few bargains. And sorry to the folks at River Island for bringing that rack crashing down. Hey at least I did buy the shirt. Then I finally got myself to the Prince Edward Theatre to see "Jersey Boys", the muchly hyped Broadway hit. Since I don't know the Four Seasons at all, a jukebox musical recycling their hits didn't interest me at all, but since I know someone (Hi Trish!) who knows Broadway's first Tony-winning Frankie Valli, I got to hear far more about the show than I had bargained for and of course ended up being curious. The Prince Edward Theatre sells the front rows in the stalls at £20 as restricted views because the stage is so high, so I got me one of those seats. I never saw anyone's feet, but it was okay, I enjoyed being up close - the only thing I did not like was that I was so close to the orchestra and the drums. When you have a fatigue-induced headache, the last thing you need are drums almost on your lap. The show itself was okay, I would have enjoyed it more if I had been properly awake and rested I'm sure, but I also found it hard to keep up with the hectic pace of the show and the frequent change of location. The cast was awesome, I was particularly surprised by Glenn Carter as Tommy DeVito since the guy had mostly made headlines some years ago for being the leader of some obscure Christian sect and had almost killed his career that way. But he was fantastic, couldn't help liking him. Stephen Ashfield as Bob Gaudio had an amazing voice I want to hear more of and Scott Monello als Frankie Valli was just adorable, though that squeaky falsetto voice killed my eardrums sometimes (and I can see why they use an alternate to share the part since it must be murder for a regular-voiced singer!). People around me, mostly middle-aged couples and several of them Americans, had a great time. So I guess it's one of those shows that just isn't meant for me, but I still had a good time and I'm glad I saw it live at last (especially at this price!) On Saturdy morning I had breakfast at the Travelodge, which was a very decent all you can eat buffet for £7.50. Since I didnt want to go to the West End where I'd end up spending lots of money I started on a long walk instead, from Liverpool St. Station through the city past St.Paul's Cathedral and across the new Millennium Bridge (well not all that new now, but new for me anyway) to Shakespeare's Globe and finally to the South Bank. I picked up my ticket for the afternoon show, then wandered about a little until I found some comfy deck chairs in front of a Foyle outlet, where I could chill for an hour, read and listen to music. I much needed rest that also finally made my headache go away. Show for the afternoon was Richard Bean's new play "England people very nice" that gave me an excuse to finally return to the National Theatre, a place that for all its concrete ugliness I really love. I had snagged a £10-seat in the front stalls with excellent views and I enjoyed the play very much. There had been some controversy, accusing the play of being both racist and overly politically correct, but I think it struck all the right notes and was once more one of these great examples how the English manage to combine humor with a serious topic, making the audience roar with laughter and think about the issues addressed in the play at the same time. Though I also noticed that the parts set in the past up to World War II flowed more easily, while the last part, set today and dealing with muslim extremism was plodding and not all that funny. I guess it's just too close to home now, dealing with people like the niqab-clad playschool teacher and the young thugs loitering in the streets. Still I think it was a great play, with a large fantastic cast. I returned to the West End at last then, treating myself to a meal at KFC in Leicester Square just like the old days when there was no KFC in Germany (now that there is, I still don't go there as I'm hardly in the city anyway) and sat in Leicester Square for a while until it was time for the second show of the day - another play. Seeing all of Shakespeare's plays eventually is one of my big theatre ambitions but since they are staged so often, I want to wait until someone interesting is in the cast. The gorgeous Jude Law playing Hamlet is one such occasion and so I booked a ticket eons ago. It was a seat on the side, but excellent view close up and I had the amazing luck that despite the theatre having been sold out for weeks, the seat in front of me stayed empty, so I could stretch my legs, slump, whatever, I still had a great view. And two long plays in one day proved rather exhausting, although it was well-done and the cast, including the dishy Mr Law, was excellent, I just lost it in the second act, closed my eyes for some time and just wished for the thing to be over. I was also surprised that the audience did not reward the cast with a standing ovation - were they all that tired? Jude Law was certainly among the "winners" of the movie stars I've seen on stage in the last years, great stage presence and a way with the Bard's words, albeit a bit drama-queeny for my taste. I also loved the girl who played Ophelia, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, actually not minding the rather bizarre fact that Polonius had a dark-skinned daughter at a medieval Danish court, and the understated staging that proved you can do drama without elaborate sets and with modern-day clothes without stooping to the depths of Germany's ridiculous Regietheater. I left London the next morning for five days and returned on Thursday for yet another play - I just couldn't miss out on the opportunity to see Rachel Weisz, one of my favorite actresses, live on stage in "A streetcar named desire" at the Donmar Warehouse. For this leg of the journey I had been able to secure a somewhat low price at the Travelodge Covent Garden, the one closest to Theatreland. The place won me over immediately - it's kind of next door to the New London Theatre and they do not only have a Ben & Jerry's vending machine by the elevators, they also had bath tubs, just as I had given up hope to get a bath in England! So I flopped into the tub first thing with my ice cream, then set off for a walk around Covent Garden. I bought some African dinner at the market and had an instant love affair with a pair of gorgeous brown ankle-high boots at Urban Outfitters, so I got them despite a rather hefty price tag. Finally it was time to see "A streetcar named desire" at the tiny Donmar Warehouse tucked away in Covent Garden which has built up an awesome reputation for great plays and small-scale musicals in the last years. Tickets to "Streetcar" had been like gold dust and I would have been pleased to sit anywhere, but row A on the side of the circle turned out to be really good - you had to lean over the rail several times, yea, but you felt like being on stage, getting such a close-up view of everything. I had wondered a little about Rachel Weisz being way too young and pretty for Blanche Dubois, having seen Glenn Close in the role a few years ago who could be her Mom. But I found it actually worked really well, since she and Stella ARE supposed to be sisters, not too far distant in age and having such a young pretty Blanche, who's more nervous wreck than fading beauty worked well for me and made her fate even sadder. Though I have to confess I was not too impressed by Rachel Weisz, going for a very teary crybaby approach, waving her arms about a lot. This Blanche is crazy from day one and don't we know it. Elliot Cowan was a huge improvement over Iain Glen though, who was far too much "English country gent" to make a believable Stanley, while Cowan was exactly the dumb but sexy ball of testosterone Stanley is supposed to be. Stella, as usual, was the only sensible and likeable person between the oddballs. I liked the idea to have Blanche's dead "boy" appear a couple of times and see what's going on in her crazy head and it made it all the more tragic to get glimpses of the "fine life" she had known. This production has shown once more just how much you can do with a small space such as the Donmar and I'm really glad I could see this. And nicely enough, it was only a five minute walk home to my hotel room! The last day, Friday, I finally went to my favorite book store in Piccadilly Circus and to HMV, the last survivor of the big multimedia stores that used to be all around the area and since I was out of shopping money I finally just decided to chill with a little lunch picknick. I first headed for Embankment Gardens, but some godawful noise from a construction site nearby drove me away again and to St.James' Park, where a helicopter buzzed around creating more noise. The weather was rather iffy at best, cloudy and windy, so I finally gave up, walked around some more and returned to the hotel then. I had kept the last evening open for a spontaneous theatre visit - thinking I'd either see "Hello Dolly" at the Open Air Theatre if the weather would be good (in the event I wouldn't have gone there that evening anyway) or "Sister Act" at the Palladium, but then I heard that the Finborough Theatre in Earl's Court would be putting on the first European production of Rodgers/Hammerstein's "State Fair". I like their music alot and this lightweight frilly show seemed like a perfect end to the trip after all the heady drama I had seen. However, I was rather stunned to realize that the Finborough Theatre wasn't even a real theatre, mere a room above a pub, seating a grand total of 40 people. Now I usually love these little unorthodox Fringe theatres and the surprisingly big cast, accompanied by a piano player, did amazing things on that tiny stage, but somehow I had expected a little bit more for an European premiere. Not to mention that the windowless airless room was stiflingly hot on that summer evening and I was kinda glad the show lasted only two hours. With the tickets for the next trip in November already booked and yet another trip firmly on the cards for February I could say goodbye to London rather easily this time though. And know now that I'll never go in the middle of summer again when the town is so overrun by tourists that I just can't enjoy it anymore.