Nicole schreibt...

After many trips across dear old Belgium on the Eurostar, I was now back on my old Germanwings flight from Cologne to Heathrow. Mostly because it enabled me to catch a matinee on Sunday before going home on the last flight, but I was also curious to finally see the "new" Terminal 2 at Heathrow and make a comparison between train and plane. Let's say the plane was indeed two hours faster all in all, but the train still feels more leisurely. You plop into your seat and spend your time reading or watching telly, whereas flying involves a lot of sitting around, being shepherded around, queuing up and so on. I guess in the end both have advantages and I'd probably let the price decide when it comes down to it. So here I was, at the grandly named Queen's Terminal, where (unlike in Dubai) the e-Pass-Gates did work and I could take a look at the grand "slipstream" sculpture about which much brouhaha had been made when the terminal opened. The trudge into London on the tube remained the same though, and this time I had to go to Paddington to stay at a Days Inn, since my usual Travelodges had been charging outrageous prices for January. Gotta say, it was worth it as the Days Inn came with a really nice breakfast and proper free wifi. After an hour in the West End to do nothing much but sit around at Caffe Nero and the usual poke around Foyle for books, it was onwards to the Menier Chocolate Factory in Southwark to see "Funny Girl". Much noise had been made about this and Sheridan Smith's casting as Fanny Brice, the part immortalized by Barbra Streisand in the movie. Since I had really liked her in Legally Blonde, I was looking forward to see her live on stage again and she didn't disappoint. No, she isn't Babs, but neither does she need to be. She also didn't have Streisand's epic nose, but she still isn't a conventional beauty (especially compared to the leggy pretty dancers in the cast). She's short and played Fanny as a rather plump country bumpkin, which worked fine for me to set her apart. She brings her own brand of extreme likeability with her though, so I felt much more for her than I did for Streisand's Fanny. Which goes doubly for Darius Campbell's suave Nicky Arnstein - while I found Sharif in the movie just creepy and unlikeable, I could definitely see here what this man's love meant for Fanny and why she defended him so and clung to him. Although I congratulate the decision to not let her end on the whiny "My Man" (beautiful song though it is) but on a defiant reprise of "Don't rain on my parade" - this Fanny is a fighter and you cheer her for finding her strength to carry on. Overall I did enjoy the show - while some of the bigger numbers will certainly look better on the large stage of the Savoy Theatre, I like the intimacy of the Menier and while Funny Girl sure isn't the strongest of musicals either book- or music wise, it was still good to see it on stage. On a final note, I was chuffed to actually recognize Graham Norton sitting two seats down the bench with his Mom. Saturday was pretty much the usual thing. I went on a longer walk from the hotel along Hyde Park towards Oxford Street which was still nicely un-crazy in the morning with the shops just opening. I did allow myself a stop at Monsoon to look at their winter sales and poked around a few other shops on my way to Covent Garden, where I had a pitstop at Caffe Nero in Seven Dials before meeting an English theatre lover who was taking my surplus ticket for Dangerous Liaisons off my hands for the matinee. We had a coffee together, returning to the Caffe Nero I had just vacated earlier, then went our separate ways, she to the Donmar, me to the Wyndham's Theatre to see Martin McDonagh's latest play "Hangmen" which had opened at the Royal Court in autumn to much favourable review and thus transfered to the West End. I've been a huge fan of McDonagh's blacker-than-black humour ever since I saw his movie "In Bruges" some years ago and managed to see one play live so far, "The Cripple of Inishmaan" with Daniel Radcliffe. So now his latest with an enticing cast that included David Morrissey and Johnny Flynn, who seems to be one of these chaps I keep stumbling over. He's not only an actor but also a decent folk singer, so after seeing him twice on stage in London, I went to see him in concert back home in Cologne, and now again on stage in London. I hadn't thought much of him so far acting-wise, but here he finally came into his own as the mysterious Mooney, who turns up at Harry Wade's pub one dark and stormy... er, day. Wade having been England's "second-best" hangman (don't mention Pierrepoint to him!) until hanging was abolished and he focused on running the pub with his wife and teenage daughter Shirley. Things happen the McDonagh-way, amid much foul language, pitch-black humour and a bunch of unexpected twists with not a minute's boredom - all around fantastic and I would love to see this filmed. I was also lucky in some way - I had initially hoped to dayseat for this, then saw that the front row was on sale and forked out for a full-price seat there. Eventually it turned out that they did sell the outer four seats of the front row as day seats, but with my seat near the middle in front of the very low stage, I almost felt like sitting in Harry's pub. The cast was all around excellent with a fabulous debut by Bronwyn James as mopey Shirley, David Morrissey as hangman Harry and Andy Nyman as his former assistant hangman, the creepy Syd. Though extra kudos does go to Johnny Flynn for downing as many (fake) pints as he does in the first act (I'd spend the next hour on the loo) and getting hanged every damn day for three months. Still on a high after the great performance I wandered around for a while, found dinner and free wifi, then went to the Donmar for the evening performance of Dangerous Liaisons. I had probably enjoyed it more if it hadn't come on the back of the fabulous Hangmen, but I found it all a bit sedate. Standout performance was for me the deliciously evil Janet McTeer as the Marquise de Merteuil, whereas Dominic West (one of the two main reasons for booking) was perhaps not entirely well-suited to the equally devilish Vicomte de Valmont. He's a good-looking chap, yes, but not exactly as a refined nobleman, more in a down-to-earth blunt way. The second main reason for booking had been to see Michelle "Lady Mary" Dockery live on stage as the virtous Madame de Tourvel, but she had dropped out at short notice to be replaced by Elaine Cassidy. Who was fine enough but I find the character just a little too overwrought to begin with and had been really curious to see what the eternally stiff-as-a-board Lady Mary had done with it. I also wasn't a fan of the standard politically correct casting of one black actress, especially in the part of Madame de Volanges, when her daughter Cécile, the wonderful Morfydd Davis, was a snowy-white blonde, but oh well. It was nice enough to see this show live on stage and to see Dominic West live, but all in all I'd have to say it was "okay" at best. I'm used to heading out of town early, so having a whole Sunday morning at leisure was a strange sensation. I remained at the hotel until check-out time at 11am, then went on a long wander along Hyde Park to Piccadilly and on to Trafalgar Square, where I paused for a longer break until crossing the river to the National Theatre, where I had booked to see the matinee of "wonder.land", a new musical by Damon Albarn of "Blur"-fame. I quite like his music and it seemed like a good idea to catch a matinee, then take the last flight home in the evening, thus saving both another hotel night in London and a day off work. The musical got a solid trashing from musical lovers though, so I had begun to regret the whole decision deeply. But with expectations sub-zero, it turned out to be not so bad after all. The premise is that of a modern teenage girl called Aly who discovers the beautiful virtual reality of "wonder.land" where she creates an avatar called Alice and meets all the creatures from Lewis Carroll's classic "Alice in Wonderland". The evil headmistress at her school confiscates Aly's phone though and "takes over" her avatar-Alice and in turn becomes the evil Queen of Hearts. Aly has to recover her avatar (and phone) with the help of her friend Luke, but also realizes tht she doesn't need her cyberspace avatar Alice anymore,that she's after all happy to be herself in the real world, where even her parents, Bianca and Matt (the mad hatter) are trying to get along again after he had lost himself in cyberspace and the world of online gambling. It is true that the plot is rather convoluted and bizarre, the costumes rather naff and that Albarn's music leaves A LOT to be desired with not a single truly memorable song. However, personally I don't think that all was bad either. I can appreciate what they were trying to say about the modern world and the attraction of fleeing reality into cyberspace. Or how much you care for your avatars and would do all you can to "save" them if they were stolen. Perhaps you need to have been one of those "losers" who hated schooland were treated crap, perhaps you need to be one of those people who spend a lot of time in cyberspace and use actual avatars... but I felt that "wonder.land" had the heart in the right place even if execution sucked somewhat. There were also pretty good performances all around, especially from Lois Chimimba as Aly (making her the third great female newcomer I've seen on this trip after Bronwyn James in Hangmen and Morfydd Davis in Dangerous Liaisons) and Enyi Okoronkwo as her friend Luke, plus a rather cartoonish panto villain in Anna Francolini's Queen of Hearts/Headmistress. Carly Bawden (Alice) deserves a honorable mention for being able to not just walk butv actually dance in those insane Lady Gaga-shoes. So, while it's not a great show by a long stretch of the imagination, I certainly don't regret seeing it either. It ended right on time on five, giving me ample time to go to Heathrow, admire the shiny new Terminal 2 again and go home. A strange final day in London, but definitely not the worst idea and one that might bear repeating.