Nicole schreibt...

London December 2018

When I booked the captioned matinee performance of Hadestown for late December, I had had no idea that this trip would turn into a farewell tour rather than seeing lots of new shows. But few of the new things announced for the winter tickled my interest and it seemed oddly fitting to rather say goodbye to some favorites instead. First and foremost of course my beloved Bats at the Dominion. And since I really really wanted to avoid Jordan and rather try and see every possible Strat now that the one and only true Strat was gone anyway, I decided to not book tickets until the performance schedule for the week was published. Only to then realize that my only chance to see the elusive Simon Gordon, who had been understudy since the beginnings, was... Thursday afternoon. So what do you do as an obsessive nutter? Of course, you throw your plans around. And ironically, it was only thanks to Hadestown's matinee that I had not booked my regular Eurostar (that would get into London too late) but the early flight from Cologne to Heathrow on Eurowings. Which meant getting up at stupid o'clock, but luckily it all worked out fine and I wasn't too tired. I had forked out for a fancier hotel to treat myself, but the Radisson Edwardian Grafton, as so often in London, really wasn't worth the bother after all, although free wifi and a big delicious breakfast buffet were a plus, as was the chance to get into the room at 11am which Travelodge would charge you dearly for. Another plus was the location up Tottenham Court Road, so after checking in and resting some, I could easily walk down to the Batcave for my penultimate visit. If I had hoped that six performances on three days might be too much for the leads and I'd get to see another Raven or Falco, I found myself disappointed, as all the leads were on. Except of course the one I HAD wanted to see at least one more time - Danielle Steers, who was OFF again. Now I know about holidays and whatnot, but it's still a bit ridiculous that on the last four visits she had always been absent. Oh well, what mattered was, that Simon was indeed on as Strat - a slightly more mature Strat (OMG chest hair!) with a fine voice, but a slightly off-beat attitude that made me inwardly dub him Stoner Strat. I also realized that I had really reached saturation point with Bat and that Adam Pascal syndrome was well and truly alive with trying to see all these other Strats, hoping for another revelation, but finding again and again, that no one can hold a candle to Andrew's extraordinary performance. Though I'll say for Simon that he is a decent performer who I'd really want to see in some other show sometime. From the Dominion I walked down all the way to the National Theatre, thinking I'd have dinner at the Wagamama on South Bank, but found an insane queue waiting at the entrance (something that would repeat itself over the days, making me decide to never use this week between Xmas and NYE for travelling again), so I moved on to the NT's Cafe which had some decent oh-so-healthy-fad food such as avocado toast. One massive advantage of changing from matinee to evening for Hadestown was that as it was a regular non-captioned performance, I could try their brand-new "smart caption glasses" that you wear like Google glasses and which give you subtitles throughout. A very lovely staffer explained how they worked to me and it was a brilliant experience indeed, no eyes darting between captions and stage, because the captions were right there over or below the performers (depending how you held your head). What a wonderful service by the Brits, which this shit-hole country here that doesn't even offer subtitled theatre and cinema would never even dream of trialling to help people! So I don't know if it was the additional bonus of the smart glasses, but I really enjoyed Hadestown very much. It's the brainchild of folk singer Anais Mitchell and director Rachel Chavkin who had earlier turned Tolstoy's venerable "War and Peace" into the fairly insane electro-pop party "Pierre, Natasha and the Great Comet of 1812" on Broadway. Here they relocated the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice into the depression-era deep south of the USA, which worked surprisingly well and the folk/jazz music was far more my cup of tea than the noisy electro-pop of Comet. With the show heading for Broadway in spring, the cast was almost entirely American, leading to a very unexpected happy reunion with Reeve Carney, who I had seen as Spiderman in the floptacular Broadway musical some years ago and liked very much. He had even brought his nemesis Patrick Page along, who played gravelly-voiced Hades, God of the Underworld, to Reeve's dreamy poet Orpheus (now reshaped as a guitar-playing singer/songwriter). Two other stand-outs were sassy Amber Grey as Hades' wife Persephone, who spends half the year underground with him and half the year above ground, bringing spring and summer to humankind, and Andre DeShields as Messenger of the Gods Hermes, who also acts as Narrator. The only one I struggled with was Eva Noblezada as Eurydice - not the poor girl's fault that she's mentally connected to the nonsense that's Miss Saigon for me these days, but I also found too many traces of whiny "OMG, my life sucks, I need a man to rescue me!"-Kim in her Eurydice. That little niggle aside, I really enjoyed the show very much, the creative staging, the music, the performances and just about everything. And even though you KNOW how it will end, during the tense last minutes when Orpheus and Eurydice walk out of the Underworld, you keep hoping against hope that there'll be another outcome. But, as Hermes so wisely says, humans are their own worst enemies, doubting and worrying and thereby failing instead of having faith. A wonderful show that I hope will clean up the Tony Awards as it deserves to in an otherwise lame year of uninspired movie adaptations and jukebox biography musicals. Next day after a quiet morning I found myself back at the Batcave for another matinee and my final visit, this time to see Barney Wilkinson, who had only joined in September to replace Jordan as second alternate Strat when he got promoted to first cast. I had heard good things about Barney and to my immense relief they proved true. He was the first Strat who brought the same kind of crazy rock star energy to the part that had made Andrew so special, and while he wasn't quite up there with him vocally and performance-wise, the boy gave it a damn good shot. He was also massively likeable, looked very young and - so unlike Jordan or even Simon - like a proper scruffy rock kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Honestly, he should have been made first cast straightaway in September and I hope that if the UK Tour happens, he will get to lead it. Otherwise I had expected a bit more sadness about being in the Batcave for the last time, but while I still think the show had deserved to run much much longer, personally I feel that my own fangirling ended on 1 September and I've really seen it often enough. I will keep tabs on some of the performers I enjoyed and hope they will go on to do other great things and for myself keep the hope alive that NYCC with Andrew will still happen to get the final goodbye that should have been in Philly. I had written down some bigger thoughts on this year's unexpected intense Bat-fandom here and here's the video from the finale with Barney:

Speaking of fandom, if Andrew had given me a headache by being AWOL in late July and then departing abruptly on 1 September, that was nothing to Ashley Day, for who I had twice booked 42nd Street this year and who twice happened to take a few days off just then. With nothing better to do and dayseats being a great option at only £15, I had gone to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in the morning to pick one up, ending up in B24, just behind the one I had sat in on my previous visit. 42nd Street is an easy show to revisit, as you can simply let all the great dance numbers wash over you while giving your brain a rest. And luckily Ashley proved to be worth the bother, now that he was finally on. I had first discovered him when he understudied Elder Price in Book of Mormon a few years ago, then seized the chance to see him in the lead in An American in Paris and now with 42nd Street he really seems to have grown into a perfect classical "song and dance leading man" with massive charisma, perhaps the John Barrowman/Hugh Jackman of this generation if he gets the chance for a big break and actually create a fat part in a new show/revival. Otherwise I didn't see any new faces, which was just as well, since Bonnie Langford is such a lovely Dorothy Brock and I can't help but have massive respect for Clare Halse, dancing up a storm as Peggy in six performances in three days. On Saturday morning I went to see the "Good Grief Charlie Brown" exhibition at Somerset House, dedicated to Peanuts' creator Charles M. Schultz, who I had admittedly not known anything about before. The Peanuts and Garfield had been two constants of life in the 80s, so it was nice to learn, see the development of his cartoons from their early looks to later and of course read tons and tons of his best strips. I had found myself with another free theatre slot to fill and since nothing new tickled me much, I decided to say goodbye to another departing show I had really enjoyed - Kinky Boots. Dayseat lines are pretty big there but I just couldn't face lining up at 8am, so I ambled over just before 10, thinking that I would be prepared to pay half price at TKTS if the dayseats were gone. Luckily, they kept selling a few spare seats at dayseat prices after the front row was gone, so I ended up in Row T at £20, which was decent enough (especially considering that Stage Entertainment would charge you around 100 Euro for such a seat). Simon-Anthony Rhodes was still Lola and still being excellent, while Oliver Tompsett had taken over Charlie. A bit too tall and manly for my liking, but quite good nonetheless. I had been tickled to see Natalie McQueen as Lauren, having liked her a lot in Murder Ballad a while ago and she sure didn't disappoint in what's overall a fairly silly part. Definitely didn't mind saying goodbye to this charming upbeat show either. I got a chance to meet up with a friend from Russia afterwards as she happened to arrive in London just that day, before moving on to my last show, this one at least something new: True West, a (very American) drama of sibling rivalry by Sam Shepherd, throwing two of my favorite actors at me - Kit Harington, aka Jon Snow, who had already impressed me in the naff Doctor Faustus, and Johnny Flynn, who just keeps turning up even if I don't actively follow what he's up to. Had to laugh when Harington walked on first, scruffy wild Jon Snow transformed into very square dull-looking 70s writer Austin with gelled hair, godawful moustache and ugly glasses. The story could best be described as "two guys get very drunk, the predictable chaos ensues" but when things really got going in the second act, it was very impressive to see Austin unravel completely and kudos to Harington, he really is a very versatile actor, both great at comedy and drama, and so much more than his iconic part in Game of Thrones. And if you need someone buttering your toast, he sure is the man for you. I was a bit less impressed by Flynn, who had done menace very well in Hangmen two years ago, but never felt like a proper threat to Austin here as evil big brother Lee, come in from the Mojave Desert to wreak havoc. Still, they played very well off each other and the two hours of the play zipped by easily. So, all in all, a rather strange trip that was more of a farewell tour of the West End I had cherished in the last 1-2 years with so many shows closing, while not much that truly excites me is announced for 2019 so far. My bank account will certainly thank me when normal services with 3-4 trips at most will resume...