Nicole schreibt...

Despite the countless trips to London there are still firsts for me: This being the first trip to London on my birthday, my first trip starting in Beggendorf and not in Cologne and finally the first trip with only plays on the menu. Starting from Beggendorf closer to the Belgian border allowed for a more leisurely morning and big birthday breakfast and I still managed to catch an earlier train (which was standing at the platform just when I arrived in Welkenraedt!). The trip to London went swimmingly and I went to my "second home in Covent Garden" once again this time, the Travelodge. Which isn't as cute and modern and snazzy as the Hub by Premier Inn, but I do appreciate the coffee maker and the tub. After a break at the hotel I went for my wander, though for once my first destination was not Foyle's, but UniQlo, the Japanese clothes chain that flogs what they call Heatwear and is supposed to keep you warm when you're out in the cold. We'll see in Belgrade and Bischofshofen whether their claim is worth anything. Not knowing what to do for dinner and being not terribly hungry I ended up in the Leon branch on Shaftesbury Avenue with their "performing" staff. Which turned out to feel slightly weird - one moment this nice young guy sells you Moroccan meatballs, next moment he's up on stage belting out a showtune. If they really want to help young performers, they should at least make sure people know their names, so we can look out for them in actual musicals eventually. Well, at least it was a tiny brush with musical theatre for this trip. My first show was the play "Venus in Fur" by David Ives, the main attraction being the two performers they cast: David Oakes, aka every crazy psychopathic brother on telly (and more recently dashingly handsome Prince Ernest of Coburg with the cutest German ever) and Natalie Dormer, the unforgotten and much lamented Margaery Tyrell, one of my all-time favorite characters on Game of Thrones. If Oakes cornered the market for psychos on telly, Dormer pretty much cornered the market for manipulative sexy intelligent queens and her Vanda here isn't much different. The story, based on the novella "Venus in Furs" by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (whose name gave us the term masochism), is that of young playwright/director Thomas, who is seeking to cast the female lead of his stage adaptation of said novella. The auditions (fruitlessly) being over, Vanda arrives on the scene last-minute, begging for her chance to audition. It marks the start of 90 minutes of a truly breathtaking cat and mouse game in which Vanda leads Thomas a merry dance of utter destruction. Both performers were excellent, but it was really Dormer who stole the show for me, playing a character not unlike Margaery (and Anne Boleyn before her), but adding layer upon layer of fabulous characterization, moving seamlessly between brassy New York actress, sexy sweet 19th century Vanda and haughty dominating Venus. And quite how she could breathe in that black vinyl corset is beyond me. It's always great to see favorites "off the telly" live on stage but rarely have I been so impressed by someone or enjoyed a performance so much. Extra marks for David Oakes getting the line "I am Borgia" out with a straight face though (and met by much tittering among the audience). I had briefly considered heading to the stage door for autographs and to see if his German on "Victoria" was learned only parrot-fashion, but as I didn't know where to find the stage door and am perpetually lazy, I went back to the hotel instead.
Friday was my chance for some sightseeing and my venue of choice was Kensington Palace (which I had never known was open for sightseeing to begin with). The reason being another queen: More recently I've become acquainted with Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, one of the best literary works I've ever read. Set in 17th century, it chronicles the adventures of puritan scientist Daniel Waterhouse, banker-spy Eliza of Qwghlm and dashing scoundrel Jack Shaftoe amid a huge cast of historical people from Isaac Newton to Louis XIV. - and among them young Caroline of Ansbach, half-orphan with little to look out for in life. In the book Eliza takes her under her wing, in reality Caroline grew up at the Prussian court, but either way she ends up as the young wife of George of Hanover, who'd become George II. of Britain and she his queen. Now Kensington Palace was doing an exhibition about the "Enlightened Princesses" from Germany - Caroline and her successors Augusta and Charlotte - so I did want to learn more about her. The exhibition was fairly small, but there's plenty else to see such as a few rooms of the young Queen Victoria and some of her and Albert's personal stuff (quite well-timed what with "Victoria" on telly at the moment), the permanent exhibitions of the King's and Queen's Apartments... and another temporary exhibition of Princess Diana's frocks from the 80s and 90s that drew bunches of middle-aged ladies (and a few hapless husbands being strung along). I definitely did enjoy the outing, but the approaching hurricane Ophelia was stirring a migraine, so I didn't linger as long as I would have wanted to and returned to the hotel for a pill and a lie-down. The afternoon was dedicated to a lovely post-birthday Afternoon Tea with a friend at the Portrait Restaurant inside the National Portrait Gallery and luckily the pill had kicked in and kicked the migraine down. Full of tea and yummy goodness, it was time for another play that had arrived hot from Broadway where it had bagged the Tony for Best New Play: "Oslo" by J.T. Rogers. I had still dithered about booking when they dangled irresistible bait in form of Toby Stephens in front of my nose. Having spent decades playing posh English gits and being known as the son of..., he had recently joined the Olymp of fabulous leading men on TV by playing Captain Flint in the pirate adventure series Black Sails (which started out horribly but gradually got better until a terrific end). "Oslo", the Norwegian capital's name in bold letters nicely juxtaposed with a city view of Jerusalem on the poster, is the true tale of Norwegian couple Terje Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul who were behind the historical peace talks between Israel and the PLO in the 90s, that ended with Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and PLO leader Arafat shaking hands in Washington in 1993 (and winning the Peace Nobel Prize one year later). The whole play feels like a political thriller from the first tentative beginnings to the famous end. Rød-Larsen's theory had been to try and bring sworn enemies together on a simple human level and face each other as human beings. Also knowing that his advantage was that Norway (unlike the USA) was seen as a fairly neutral state. Along with copious amounts of alcohol and home-cooked Norwegian food this actually worked where the official US-led negotiations failed. We meet the people involved back then, most notably Palestine's Finance Minister Ahmed Qurie and Israel's Director-General of the Foreign Ministry Uri Savir along with several others on either side and their Norwegian hosts. The cast was pitch-perfect all over, with the stand out for me perhaps Philip Arditti's Uri Savir and the charming Lydia Leonard, whose Mona Juul also acts as a fourth-wall-breaking narrator. Toby Stephens didn't disappoint either, back to his parade parts of slightly harried constipated upper class gent (and with facial expressions inherited directly from Mum). While the play felt slightly too long at three hours and sagged a bit after the interval, time still flew by overall and I was particularly surprised how entertaining and at times laugh-out-loud funny it was. Truly worth seeing!
Saturday morning I took it easy in the hotel room, not wanting to give the migraine another chance to raise its ugly head, before I had to head out to meet two friends at Foyle's Cafe for a tea and a chat. Then it was time for the double bill of the day - a return to "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child". I would have liked to see it again anyway and had jumped at the chance to see a captioned performance that makes it so much easier for me to follow. It did feel like a different beast this time and not just because of the cast change that happened since. Back when it opened last summer there was this incredible buzz of being "in the room where it happened" (to borrow from another theatrical hype) and everything from magic tricks to Snape's appearance being greeting with gasps and even applause by the hyped-up audience. Now it all felt more sedate and routine, even though I still spotted many fans with Harry Potter T-Shirts, Hoodies or scarves. The magic tricks are not as gasp-inducing the second time round and the story definitely has clunky bits with some tedious dialogues, especially the repeated banging on about father and son issues. Yeswegeddit, enough already. But I still enjoyed it and the new cast could certainly live up to their predecessors. Except perhaps Jamie Glover as Harry Potter himself, who was okay, but Jamie Parker had simply been born for this part. On the other hand, I liked the new Albus Theo Ancient a tad bit more than first Albus Sam Clemment and Samuel Blenkin was an adorable new Scorpius. And James Howard's Draco nearly reached Jason Isaacs-levels of hotness. New Delphi Annabel Baldwin did what she could with the part, but it's just one of the weirdest and most unconvincing knots of the story: She's being built up as Voldemort's Daughter and the big baddie with a big showdown in the offing, but then she's kinda like "Nah, not causing trouble, just wanted to meet my Dad, bye now, everyone!" ...and happy end? Umm... nope. Never mind, I'm still glad I was able to see it again, but twice is now really quite enough. And so my birthday outing to London ended and it was back home for me - but only ten more weeks until the next trip, which will be filled with musicals again.