Nicole schreibt...

Even for me it was a rare "first" to head to a London for a third trip within one year. But the prospect of seeing the gorgeous John Barrowman don the frocks and wigs of Zaza in "La cage aux folles" was just irresistible. As was the chance to see Jane Horrocks live on stage. Besides, there's nothing to brighten up the dull grey November like a trip to my favorite city, so off I went and this time back on Lufthansa's mid-day flight. Lufthansa departed five minutes early, arrived around twenty minutes early... and my joy of having more time in London was prompty foiled by Heathrow Airport which apparently can't handle the cheek of planes turning up early like party guests when the host is still in underwear. So we flew circles above London for ten minutes (helping nada, since there were only clouds to see from above, not the capital) and once we were finally allowed to touch down, were kept standing on the tarmac for another ten minutes "since the gate was still occupied" (yea right and Europe's biggest airport has only one gate?). Now I'm not the most patient person on earth, so I was less than thrilled, but eventually we were able to dock at the gate and leave. I had opted for a cheap hotel in King's Cross, which was decent enough for £45 per night (including a really good English breakfast) and only two minutes' walk from the Underground (although as luck would have it, the Piccadilly Line that is the fastest direct connection between the West End and King's Cross, didn't stop there this weekend, thanks to maintenance work). I had a little time left so I went to Dress Circle first and to Fopp, where I ran a bit riot and stocked up on cheap DVDs big time. Since I wasn't really hungry, I decided to just buy a sandwich and for some reason bought a can of cider instead of my usual Diet Coke. Bad idea. Since I usually don't drink beer or any other alcoholic beverages in the street I had no idea that it's not allowed to drink them in public and didn't get far until a police patrol stopped me and demanded to throw the cider away. Gah. Luckily I was two-thirds through the can already and just felt rather stupid overall. Though to be fair, I actually approve of the policy since it does annoy me to see so many people on the streets of Cologne with beer bottles all the time. And to make up for the disappeared cider, I bought myself another glass of the stuff once I reached the Young Vic Theatre in Southwark, where I would see "Annie get your gun". It's a tricky musical with its blatant racism towards "Indians" (nowaways called Native Americans) and it's none too subtle sexism when Annie is forced to let Frank win their last shooting match in order to get the guy who can't tolerate being second-best to a woman. But evergreens like "There's no business like showbusiness" have made this show live on and I still think it's pretty good fun if you can accept that it was written in different times (just like Rodgers/Hammerstein's "The King and I" for example). Director Richard Jones tried to deal with the racism of the show by moving it to the 1950's and a fictional touring cast of wild west actors where the "Indians" were played by a white and a black guy respectively. But the result is a strange mush of different decades that doesn't really work for me, especially when Jones tosses in the 40's for good measure when Annie goes on her tour through Europe and meets not only Churchill or De Gaulle but also Hitler (and disapproves of him). And while I was glad to get a chance to see Jane Horrocks live on stage, I am not really sure she was a good choice for Annie Oakley. She's fabulous and very endearing in the comedy parts of the show and in songs such as "You can't get a man with a gun", but her singing left a lot to be desired. Her leading man Julian Ovenden as Frank Butler irritated me most of the time by looking like a clone of John Barrowman, albeit with a good singing voice. The big company numbers like "There's no business like showbusiness" or "I got the sun in the morning" were sadly totally wasted and the "orchestra" consisted of only four pianos, probably in an attempt to emulate the "Wild West Saloon" feeling. For £20 it was a decent enough evening and I'm glad I finally got to see this show live, but I really can't see this survive in the West End. On Saturday London (and England in general) was hit by the worst autumn storm of the year - so I was out and about in rain and wind and promptly lost my umbrella in one of the bookshops where I always go to browse for good new books. Just my luck. Since I had so much time on my hands (and not enough money) after a lovely lunch in Chinatown, I decided to walk from the West End to Victoria, making a detour to Savile Row to finally visit the Abercrombie & Fitch flagship store. Why? Not sure actually, except for the fact that A&F is the ultimate hype in Germany at the moment (and elsewhere apparently too) and there are a couple of people at work who only ever seem to sport A&F shirts, thus broadcasting how trendy and widely-travelled they are since A&F has no shop in Germany yet and rigorously goes after anyone trying to tell their stuff via eBay and the like. I had stumbled into a A&F shop at a shopping mall in Washington two years ago, more "by chance" since I just wander from shop to shop anyway in a mall and for the life of me couldn't see what's so special about their stuff. So I wanted to investigate again - and found myself absolutely dumbfounded. The huge shop was CROWDED, mostly with teenagers clutching piles of shirts and t-shirts and their exasperated parents clutching their credit cards. The shop was semi-dark (how can you judge the colour of the clothes that way?), music was blaring, the staff was dancing and the clothes were exactly the bland stuff I remembered from Washington. Expensive bland stuff with a regular t-shirt clocking in at £30. It was mayhem central with endless queues in front of the changing rooms and I think I wasn't the only one who let out a breath of relief when I was finally out in the street again. Okay, maybe I've finally officially reached the age of being a stuffy old bore but I still can't see what on earth the hype is about. I had been wanting to revisit "Billy Elliot" for a while already, but I usually find it hard to return to a show I know when there's always so much new stuff to see in London. This time I finally had time for a return trip and when I saw on the website that this matinee would be captioned (for deaf and hard of hearing people), I didn't need to think twice. No matter how much I try, I never catch all of what's being said on stage, being so used to subtitles in movies and TV-series (lazy, I know) and it doesn't help that the people in "Billy Elliot" speak in a Northern English Geordie accent. So here I was at the Victoria Palace Theatre again, in a decently priced seat on the Upper Circle that still offered a pretty good view on everything including the captions that were shown on either side of the proscenium arch. And while I found them helpful, I am not sure if I would to use them all the time, since a stage is somewhat larger than a TV screen and you miss too many bits centre stage when reading them. Having said that, "Billy Elliot" was still as touching and wonderful as it had been when I first saw it just after its opening a few years ago. Perhaps even more so in these changed times, when the world has learned a bitter lesson about the greedy capitalism that Maggie Thatcher promoted in the 80's when she privatized half the country and wanted to close the mines, which lead to the long fierce miners' strikes in the North East that form the background of Billy's tale. I am not sure which Billy I saw (blame the Upper Circle seat, though I do think they should put slips with the day's cast into the programme like other shows to), but whether it was Ollie Gardner or Brad Wilson, the kid was definitely fabulous, as were Michael and Debbie and also the grown ups, Kate Graham as Mrs Wilkinson, Joe Caffrey as Dad and Craig Gullivan as Tony. And moments like the touching final song when the miners go back to work and Billy sets out for London, when you start choking on a lump in your throat and your eyes water are still the best argument why live theatre is like nothing else. In fact I needed some space to breathe and since it had finally stopped raining, I walked back from Victoria to the West End, adding another mile or so to my mileage for the day and once more just living on a sandwich. The last show for the trip and the main event was of "La Cage aux folles" at the Playhouse Theatre in the evening - and luckily it was worth every penny spent on the trip. I had seen a production in Aachen years ago that had bored me stiff and to refresh myself on the story I had watched both the original French movie and the US-remake "The Birdcage" now, which both bored me stiff as well. Most of all I disliked the premise that Georges actually has the guts to ask his partner Albin to stay out of the picture or pretend to be an uncle just for some bigoted conservatives. Even if his son's love life is at stake. And that Albin doesn't tell him to stuff it. So Barrowman or not, I was very sceptic about this show. Only to be completely hooked within five minutes of it. The Cagelles were hilariously funny and the breaking down of the fourth wall to make people feel they were actually inside the Saint Tropez nightclub Georges runs, worked perfectly. Not to mention that Simon Burke was an immensely likeable George, unlike Robin Williams or his French counterpart in the movies who always looked like cheap sleazy pimps to me. I also realized that this is one story that really works much better as a musical than a movie, because the songs give the chars a much needed depth that helps us to understand them so much better - like Georges' romantic "Song on the sand" that reveals so much true feeling and of course Zaza's big anthem "I am what I am" that is so much more touching than all the silly ranting of the movie Albins. And then there was John Barrowman of course, the star of the evening. While he was taller than everyone else and shaped like a Bulgarian wrestler, which made it hard to see him as a fragile feminine type, he definitely had the audience at his feet from the first minute on and great chemistry with Simon Burke. It was just so obvious how much he was enjoying himself and the great atmosphere made for a fabulous theatre evening. This is certainly the "definite" version of this musical and I'm really glad that I went to see it after all. So while it was only a short trip, it was definitely worth the money, both for the shows and for the shopping I did (including doing half my Christmas shopping at Heathrow Airport on Sunday before flying home!). Now bring on February and Damian Lewis as Moliere's "Misanthrope"!