Escape to Dorset

Have had a rare theatre-free week, which is probably for the best as I have some kind of winter lurgy at the moment and would just be one of those serial coughers who annoys everyone sitting around them in the auditorium.

Went down to Dorset for the birthday of Dan last weekend and had a fantastic time. Drove down on Friday with the Gin Soaked Boy and Matt-in-need-of-a-nickname and were joined later by L&D. On Saturday we went to Lulworth Cove and had smoked salmon sandwiches and prosecco on the beach. Dubious as I was about this expedition, it was actually rather wonderful, the beach was truly beautiful, an amazing palette of blues, the kind of which you just don't get in the city. We found a sheltered spot and spent an hour or so staring out at the water (not to mention Toby's ill advised but highly entertaining rock-juggling). The evening was predictably boozy but also very agreeable. On Sunday, a few us drove down to rainy Weymouth and spent the afternoon wandering around the harbour, one of the more creative ways of shaking off a hangover and actually pretty cool in its own aimless way.

A Tale Of Two Musicals

Two very different theatrical experiences this week. On Wednesday night I caught a performance of Monty Python's Spamalot at the Palace Theatre. I must confess I was looking forward to this, having rather fallen for all the Broadway-related hype, but I was really let down by the show. Though I did laugh in places, on the whole I found it overlong, repetitive and a little boring. It's not that I dislike Python, the opposite in fact, but everything that made them interesting is absent from this retread through the Holy Grail. I know they make no claims otherwise, tagging it as a "loving rip-off" but it seemed so lazy. The (very American) audience were applauding before half the characters even spoke, people were chanting along with the lines and a crowbarred-in rendition of Always Look On the Bright Side turned into a very cheesy sing-along. I was talking to Mark Ravenhill on the interval and he seemed as bemused as I was so at least I wasn't alone in feeling like the only sober guest at a very rowdy party.

Far, far better was Caroline, Or Change at the National last night. Lisa and I went along to the opening night, neither of us with particularly high expectations - Tony Kushner's musical about a black maid and her Jewish employers in 1960s Louisiana sounded very worthy on paper. But we were both completely blown away. This is that rarest of things, a musical that deals with social issues in an intelligent and engaging way, with characters who are well-rounded and believeable as people. It was a euphoric and intense production, with a cast who were truly faultless, not a mediocre vocal performance among them. Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic. Very tempted to see it again.

Brownies at Borough Market

Friday evening saw me at the White Bear in Kennington for a production of a rarely staged Polish play, The Police. Written by Slawomir Mrozek, it's set in an unnamed state where the populus have become so loyal and unquestioning that the police are forced to stir up dissent to keep themselves in business.

I've never been to the White Bear before - it's a proper pub theatre, attached to a proper pub - boozy regulars and a mist of cigarette smoke. The production was rather ambitious for such a small space, especially at the start, as we were grudgingly given permission to enter the venue by an unsmiling, uniformed woman who herded us through the pretty grim corridor beside the gents toilets - much to the befuddlement of one of the aforementioned regulars. Unfortunately nothing in the play itself quite lived up to this inventive beginning. Though the satire still felt fresh, and I found myself laughing more than I expected, the staging felt rather stiff and the performances were only so-so.

The day after I made my first ever visit to Borough Market - and, oh my God, what have I been doing with my Saturday mornings before now? It was as brilliant as everyone says; Lisa and I stocked up on cheese and olives and bought some excellent walnut bread (and a large slab of chocolate brownie which I was compelled to consume in the grounds of Southwark Cathedral). Then we strolled back to Waterloo along the river walk, past the Globe and the Tate. Pretty perfect as days go. In fact the last few weekends have been really lovely, I hope the pattern continues for the pending excurison to Dorset for Dan H's birthday.

The Young Vic Reopens

The last time I went to the Young Vic I was still at university and the main draw, I must admit, had little to do with the fact that I'd studied Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus in some depth on my course, and everything to do with the fact that the title role was being played by Jude Law. Yes, I know - I'm not proud of myself, I'm not usually such a name-whore - but he was still an on-the-rise talent back then, with less bad movies and nanny-shagging incidents under his belt. And it was an enjoyable production as I recall, Law was on good form, despite sporting some rather curious facial hair. (Proper, I'm-an-actor-me beardy business).

Returning to the theatre on Wednesday for the opening performance in the newly refurbished space was interesting. After a lengthy period of refurbishment, the Young Vic is now equipped with a very Shoreditch-esque bar area in which we were treated to champagne and speeches.

The show itself, Tobias and the Angel, was billed as a 'community opera' - two words in conjunction that set alarm bells ringing in my head - but with its huge choir and big stage-filling set pieces it was actually a rather joyous affair, engaging and inclusive. I found myself really caught up in the piece and I loved some of its creative touches, like the great, green fish in the fantastic underwater scene. On paper what sounded worthy and a little off-putting was in fact accessible, entertaining and uplifting. An unexpected treat.

Future productions look exciting too, with Rufus Norris' adaptation of DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little topping my how-the-hell-are-they-going-to-do-that? pile.

Inside a South London Icon

Though I've been living in the new place for about six weeks now, my intention to spend the weekend doing exciting London-y things that had not been possible before, hasn't quite come off. Open House weekend and several rep cinema screenings have both fallen by the wayside in exchange for the combined pleasures of croissants, tea and a long trawl through the Sunday papers. So I was doubly glad I made the effort this weekend to walk over to Battersea Power Station for the current Chinese art exhibition.

To be honest I wasn't that fussed by the art installations themselves, bar the strange display of slowly rotting apples which seemed in keeping with the general decay of the place. What I found genuinely thrilling was the opportunity to see up close such an iconic - and vast - building. I've always had a thing for secret spaces, hidden corners of the city and the way they work on your imagination, abandoned tube stations and the like (which is why I loved the production of Dido, Queen of Carthage at the House of St Barnabas in Soho earlier this year). After traipsing through Battersea Park and gawping at the considerable queue, the first thing that hits you is the scale, it's quite dizzyingly huge. And for someone accustomed to low-rise European cities it throws your sense of perspective completely out of whack. Unfortunately we weren't let loose to explore on our own terms, but then the building is derilict and unsafe, so that's probably wise. I couldn't quite understand why they'd employed some burly chap to shout at people who attempted to take photos of the interior though.

The building is pretty much a shell now, but you could see the differences between the part that was built earlier - heavy on art deco tiles - and the parts that were added later in the 1950s. The tour took us through damp, disused corridors, stripped and eerie. The art felt like an afterthought, though the juxtaposition of the shiny animation detailing the proposed development with the Chinese video art was rather cool. By the time we left the sun was setting and the building was silhouetted by the twilight, an oddly striking and beautiful sight.

Three Plays in a Week

Been an incredibly busy week theatre-wise. On Tuesady night I traipsed out to the Yvonne Arnuad in Guildford to see the new adaptation of Jerome K Jerome's Three Men In A Boat. The gentle, anecdotal comedy of the novel is well suited for the stage but the rather creaky production was the most regional-theatre of all the regional theatre productions I've yet seen, pandering unashamedly to the mostly grey crowd, even pausing for a rather cringe-worthy but seemingly popular sing-along in the second act. (They couldn't keep everyone happy though, and one chap with a booming voice, and probably though I couldn't see him, a nice bushy moustache, kept loudly proclaiming his displeasure every time they veered even slightly away from the events of the book).

Wednesday night's show couldn't have been more different if it tried. The production of Kafka's Metamorphosis at the Lyric, by Icelandic company Vesturport, was intense and often very striking. Some critics seem troubled by the liberties it has taken with the text but my main problem was that alot of these physical theatre techniques already feel over-familiar, from the company's own Woyzeck (which played again in London earlier this summer) to the superb Nights at the Circus in which lead actor and director Gisli Orn Gardarsson also starred. My expectations were high and while I could see what they were aiming for, and could certainly admire some aspects of what they achieved, I ultimately felt rather let down.

I'm still mulling over last night's show. it was the opening night of the new production of Bent at the Trafalgar Studios. It was a glitzy affair, as these things go, with Graham Norton, Maureen Lipman and - apparently, though I didn't see her - Monica Lewinski amongst the audience. And though the play feels in many ways dated, it still has real power. I was less convinced by Alan Cummings central performance though. As Max, a man who, when arrested and sent to a concentration camp in wartime Berlin, would rather wear the yellow star of a Jew than the pink triangle of a homosexual, I found him rather mannered and tic-driven. His co-star Chris New, as fellow prisoner Horst, was stronger, he felt far more confident despite his relative inexperience.

It's very much a play of two halves. The first is a very OTT affair, bombarding you with broad comedy, sudden, brutal violence and dramatic sheets of flame, while the second half is altogether more subtle and successful. But though the tension was often unberable, I thoughht some crucial connection, some vital, human something, was lacking - I still can't quite put my finger on what.

After all that I'm looking forward to tonight, a laid-back evening at the flat with friends, movies, and maybe the odd cocktail. No, make that definitely, the odd cocktail...

A Night at the Lyric

Went back to the Lyric (one of my favourite London theatres) on Thursday, after a too-long summer hiatus. Their main house programme doesn't kick off until Wednesday (with a version of Kafka's Metamorphosis, that I'm really quite excited about seeing) but their studio theatre is playing host to an Anglo-Iranian production called The Persian Revolution - a surreal, dramatic essay on the 1906 constitutional revolution in Iran. What this meant in practice, was a five-strong cast, clad in matching purple suits, playing multiple roles and fleshing out the complicated social and political background to this pivotal episode in the history of the Middle East. A lot of this I found genuinally interesting but I thought the director was often trying to hard to make things work in a theatrical context, overwhelming some fascinating material with a lot of shouting, singing and unnecessary dashing about.

Other then that, Mum came to visit the flat on Tuesday, and took Lisa and I out for dinner at great local Italian. And, even better than that, bought us new wine glasses. Finally we can cease drinking wine out of huge tumblers (or, worse, mugs!)

Voyage to the West End

Another West End transfer on Thursday, this time the Donmar's production of John Mortimer's A Voyage Round My Father. The play is an entertaining and affectionate study of Mortimer's own father, a successful barrister, blinded in middle age. Derek Jacobi plays the main role and it's as superb a performnace as you expect: charismatic, powerful, yet not without vulnerability. Yet the play is a very soft-centred affair, which imparts no real insight into what made the man tick. He remains something of a 'character,' a collection of quirky habits, not really a man you ever understand.

Jeins and I were sitting next to Mortimer himself throughout the play and various people kept coming over to pay their respects. As did Dominic Rowan, during the curtain call. It made the production that much more moving, the awareness that this wasn't just a series of comic scenes but a very personal piece written by the man sitting besides us. I just wish what was happening on stage could have supplied that extra emotional kick on its own.

The following night I had the Gin Soaked Boy over for dinner - there was meant to be more people but it all fell apart at the last minute - and got hopelessly tipsy, subjecting the man, I suspect, to a lot of finger-jabbing and general ranting. Ah well, while I would rather I had not got quite so specatcularly inebriated, the bits of the evening I remember were great fun! Cooking is so much more enjoyable when done with someone else.

The 39 Steps

After a week with comparatively little on (bar a visit to the Spitz to see the idosyncratic howlings of Bat For Lashes), Lisa and I went to see the Tricycle's production of The 39 Steps last night at the Criterion in the West End.

It was a sweet, slight confection - John Buchan's classic thriller tackled by just four people who play all the roles (they even occasionally play bits of the scenery.)The production contained some lovely touches, including the obligatory - and rather ingenious - Hitchcock cameo, but it was essentially a one trick show and the idea of a small cast multi-tasking in such a way is hardly a new one. Still it kept me entertained and laughing for much of its length, which given this has been a particularly stressful week, is hardly something I'm going to complain too much about.

The Orange Tree Misses the Mark

In Richmond on Friday for The Madras House at the Orange Tree. Having seen The Voysey Inheritance by Harley Granville Barker at the National earlier in the year, I was eager to see another work by this rather radical playwright, but unfortunately Sam Walter's production left me feeling...educated, but not particularly entertained. Granville Barker's take on the position of women in early 20th century society is fascinating in places but at three stately hours the play felt interminable at times and I was checking my watch a great deal in the last act. A shame as the cast were excellent and the play was robust enough, I believe to stand a less reverential handling. Still a trip to the Orange Tree is alays enjoyable, it's such a great theatre, friendly, willing to stage unexpected and difficult work, and unique among London's fringe venues with its in-the-round set-up. However attending non-press performances, especially matinees, it's easy to feel like the youngest person in the room, bar the actors, by several decades. It needs to work on attracting a more rounded crowd.

On Saturday, the Gin Soaked Boy and Matt-in-need-of-a-nickname came over to the flat for Mexican food and Margaritas. We ended up talking into the early hours of the morning and went through a large amount of wine in addition to those margaritas. A great night, but I sloped off back to Sunbury the next morning with my second hangover in as many weeks.

More Lorca - and an Impromptu Party

Back at the Arcola last night for the concluding production in the Viva Lorca festival. A very different prospect from the vibrant take on Yerma that I saw there recently, When Five Years Pass is a surreal tragedy influenced heavily by Dali. This kind of surrealist approach, full of dancing clowns and dead cats, at times feels incredibly dated and alienating and yet I was often drawn along by it. The core of the story, about a man who waits five years to marry his young fiancee only to be rejected, had a genuine emotional impact, helped by some good performances. Yet the piece was difficult to connect with, more of interest as a depiction of a certain cultural movement of the time, then as a drama. As difficult as it is to get to, I like the Arcola a lot, it's a theatre with ambition and a great artistic resource for its local community.

Though we didn't plan it as such, Saturday turned into something of an unofficial housewarming. One of those evenings when the consumption of some apple schnapps the colour of Fairy Liquid suddenly seemed like a really great idea. Lisa and I were both feeling a tad fragile the following morning, though S&C's generously donated double-chocolate cookies (home-baked, no less) went some way to taking the edge off.

Viva Lorca - and a New Home

Last Friday, after a busy and stressful week, I was due to see Yerma at the Arcola theatre, the second production in the theatre's Viva Lorca season. To be honest, I was very tempted to make my excuses and get out of it. I was so tired and just wanted to head home, but I'm so glad I didn't pull out - it was a fabulous show, vibrant and lyrical. Kathryn Hunter was compelling as the tormented and childless Yerma, scuttling about, husky and hunched - you could feel the desperation radiating from her. The flexible Arcola space had been split down the middle with the audience on either side, adding to the production's unsettling but effective atmosphere. I was particularly taken with the scene where a group of washerwomen beat their sodden clothes against the ground sending water everywhere, their ritual accompanied by onstage drumming.

For such an essentially bleak drama this was vibrant and exciting stuff. And its energy was infectious. I was on such a high by the time it reached its tragic conclusion, a feeling inhanced by the Spanish guitar music and flickering candles in the Arcola lobby. For two hours I was able to forget all the little niggling worries that had followed me about all week and get lost in the spectacle. That's why I love the theatre - that feeling - it doesn't happen often, but this production hit all the right buttons.

As for the flat, after much faffing and fussing, we have finally moved in. Tall Matt, Ann and Sarah B were all good enough to lend a hand and the place is slowly starting to feel like home, though the walls are still rather bare - we need art! Lisa however won't be joing me until her course at the Institute of Education begins - it feels a bit odd having the place to myself.

Not Long Now...

Just returned from a little celebration at what is, as of today, our new flat. We sat in the empty living room, knocked back some well deserved bubbly and plotted how we would arrange the furniture when we finally moved our stuff in. I'm so excited about the move, it's going to make such a difference to my life, being so centrally located - I can't wait!


No theatre this week, not had the time, nor is there much opening in London at the moment - but I did manage to catch the outdoor screening of Howl's Moving Castle at Somerset House. The weather was kind to us, thankfully, letting us spread a blanket on the ground and partake of some M&S nibbles and our smuggled-in gin without being rained on. And Miyazke's beautiful animation really benefited from being seen on such a big screen - I think I enjoyed the film even more this time then when I watched the DVD. Definitely going to have to repeat this experience next summer.

Rock 'n' Roll

So, Rock'n'Roll...

It took a while to digest this one, to work out exactly how I felt about it and how it made me feel - which is a good thing surely.

It's actually very hard to describe what it's about - because while it encompasses so much, it never really settles on any one theme, it hops from one idea to another. For those it don't know, R'n'R concerns Jan (played subtly and quite superbly by Rufus Sewell) a Czech student with a passion for rock music whose life gets overtaken by the politics of his country. This enables Stoppard to touch on numerous themes, communism, the power of music, academia, identity, and so on.

I can see why some people react against Stoppard, the play is very cerebral, at times seemingly rather proud of just how clever it is, and in the first half in particular there was little to engage with emotionally. Sorcha Cusack's tearful breakdown is meant to be the big moment of revelation in this part of the play, but it was just so jarring and inorganic, I couldn't buy it. In fact I found her performance difficult to get to grips with throughout.

Things warmed up considerably in the second half however and when the middle-aged Jan (having remained stoic and passive throughout everything, despite being imprisoned under the communist regime and having his record collection destroyed by the police) finally cracks, I did find find myself welling up. It was a well judged moment - and it made me think about the fact that my grandfather too spent time in prison under similar circumstances under Tito, something I've long known but if I'm honest never given much thought before now. The play needed that emotional hook or it wouldn't have worked for me (and I would have liked to know a lot more about Syd Barratt and the Czech band The Plastic People Of The Universe, just hearing the songs wasn't really enough - at times it just felt like a trawl through Stoppard's record collection).

It's a play that will stay with me certainly, though I didn't adore it with same passion as Lisa, who was seeing it again after already catching it at the Royal Court earlier this year.

Cocktails & Capoeira

Fate conspired to prevent me from seeing A Right Royal Farce, which I was supposed to see last week, and as it turns out I am entirely grateful to fate, though I must admit part of me was curious, in a rather grubby voyeuristic, way to discover how terrible it actually was.

I did get to the theatre on Friday though, when I took my mum to see Brasil Brasileiro at Sadler's Wells. We had a lovely day - we wandered up into town in the afternoon, saw the World's Most Beautiful Pair Of Boots in a shop in Covent Garden (ridiculously expensive, no way I can even think about having them) before floating over to Islington on a cushion of watermelon martinis. The show was fantastic - vibrant, energetic and colourful. I was especially taken with the display of capoeira and the noisy, percussive finale. It could have done with dropping a couple of the songs, but other than that it was a great night. So much fun.

Saturday was given over to an OMH gathering, now something of a bi-annual tradition, down by the riverside in Hammersmith. It was lovely to see everyone, though Lisa and I slunk off for a bite at Browns at a very civilised point in the proceedings. It's Rock'N'Roll tonight - my chance to see if it lives up to all the critical praise.

Melting at the Chocolate Factory

Laura and I went to see The Last Five Years at the Menier Chocolate Factory on Wednesday. This is a venue I really like, they stage interesting work and have a good track record with small scale musicals (the current production of Sunday in the Park With George started life in the Menier) but they really need to do something about the air con - or rather the lack of - in the theatre. They were handing out battery-powered fans in the cafe beforehand (and I'd brought a fan along with me anyway because I remembered how stuffy it was when I saw Jonathan Larson's Tick, Tick...Boom! there last summer). But this was something else. I know it's a fringe venue with limited resources but there are limits to what people will put up with.

Shame, as in many respects it's a great space and the show, while often problematic, is worth seeing. It's an account of a five year relationship - told forwards by the man and backwards by the woman, dueting only once in the middle for their wedding scene. Apparently it was based rather closely on composer Jason Robert Brown's own marriage (his ex-wife even brought a law suit against him as a result). It definitely favoured the male character's perspective and because, due to the show's quirky structure, the couple rarely interact, it's difficult to empathise overly with either of them.

Still it had a very New York sensibility to it, which I liked - I'm a sucker for jokes about Random House and the agony of searching for an agent (though I can understand why some people might find that kind of thing insufferably smug and elitist) - and I enjoyed Brown's lyrics particular in the Shiksa Goddess song about his parents' desire for him to date a nice Jewish girl. I'm glad I went along to see it but won't be going back to the Menier in the summer again if I can help it!

As for the flat, we had a second viewing and made an offer on it. We're swimming in paperwork at the moment but hopefully this is the one.

On The Move

Where to start? Been a packed couple of weeks, a lot happening. First there was Paris. Three days in the French capital; having visited the city before we didn't feel the pressure to cram in tons of cultural trips, to zip around the sights, instead we took things easy, eating long lunches, stopping for coffee, traipsing through the shops. We ate at a couple of wonderful restaurants and stayed in cosy but stylish hotel on a Left Bank side street, near the Luxembourg Gardens. We did spend a morning in the Rodin museum, sheltering from the heat in its tranquil sculpture garden. The whole trip was lovely and over far, far too quickly.

Since getting back everything has revolved around sorting out a place to live (though Lisa and I did find time to see the messy but entertaining Under the Black Flag by simon Bent at the Globe last week). We want to be in by September and have been trawling the internet for suitable flats. Lisa made dinner (and sublime cheese cake) for Matt, Sarah and I on Wednesday and we chose a few to arrange viewings for. We looked at the first four yesterday and surprised ourselves by liking two very different places; we hadn't expected to see something that good so quickly. They're very different places but I think one had the edge on the other, better location and a quirky charm, lots of odd angles, whereas the other was big and airy but kind of soulless.

It was an incredibly tiring day and sitting with L&D and the Gin Soaked Boy at the Hope on Wandsworth Common later that afternoon I felt absolutely shattered. I think the magnitude of what we're doing finally hit home. Today Lisa and I chilled out with a double bill of noir influnenced movies at the Richmond Filmhouse, including the fabulous Brick which really warrents a repeat viewing. We'll find out more about the flat situation tomorrow. Trying not to get too excited until Lisa speaks to the estate agents.

Puppets and Acrobats

Finally had the pleasure of seeing Avenue Q on Tuesday – and it was a pleasure. I can’t remember laughing that much in the theatre for a long while. Yes, a lot of what the critics had to say is true; it is hopelessly slushy, about three songs too long and it does lose something in the second half – but so what? A warm-hearted send-up of Sesame Street was never going to contain razor-sharp satire or relentless narrative drive. It does exactly what it set out to do, keep its audience entertained and send them happily out into the streets. I had a great time as did Laura, who came along with me.

The following night I went to check out the return of Vesturport Theatre’s Woyzeck to the Barbican. I remember being rather intrigued by this production last year when it was part of the Barb’s Young Genius season but never got around to going along. Since then Lisa and I saw, and adored, Kneehigh’s wonderful Nights At The Circus with the Icelandic Gisli Orn Gardarsson as the sceptical journalist Walser. That closing scene of Fevvers and Walser spinning in midair - reaching out to one another - was one of the most beautiful things I have seen on the stage this year.

Well, Gardarsson directed Woyzeck and the production contains many of the circus-influenced elements that Vesturport are renowned for and that, obviously, featured a great deal in Nights. This was the main draw for me - I love the gleefully physical nature of their work. I knew very little about Georg Buchner’s play before I went, and if I’m honest don’t think I came away from it knowing much more. The production contained some stunning moments, but it felt very episodic – perhaps inevitably given that Buchner died aged 23, before Woyzeck was completed, leaving only a series of fragmented scenes – and the whole thing was rather bemusing: the podgy Cupid character with a bow and arrow? The Godlike Elvis-impersonator chappie with the giant inflatable globe? I’m still none the wiser as to what they were there for. Still, the tragedy of the central story eventually shone through the oddness and the final scenes were rather disturbing - powerful and unsettling to watch. In other words, the antithesis of Avenue Q.

Woyzeck may have been dark and ambitious and pushed its performers to their physical limits, but if I were going to sit through either again it would be the one with the puppet porn!

More City Bliss

The National’s new production of The Seagull was one of the productions I was most looking forward to this summer. I really relished the prospect of seeing Juliet Stevenson on stage and was intrigued to see Ben Whishaw especially as I now know he’ll be playing the lead in the upcoming film of Patrick Suskind’s Perfume. But, once again, I went to the National with high hopes and came away feeling rather underwhelmed.

I’m a bit of a novice when it comes to Chekhov. I’ve not seen The Seagull performed before so it was difficult to appreciate what I gather was the radical nature of Katie Mitchell’s production. The play had been set in some vast warehouse like space, with peeling paint and an air of decay. Servants zipped back and forth constantly and doors slammed with regularity. I could kind of see what she intended, life progressing while these characters were content to stew in their own self-induced torment, oblivious to all else. But all the running about ended up muffling a lot of the dialogue, which grew to be irritating in the end.

Thursday’s excursion was more successful. Matt and I went to see Matthew Todd’s play Blowing Whistles at the Sound Theatre, a cold, curious space in a club off Leicester Square. The play started off as pure sitcom, but slowly evolved into something darker and more contemplative. It was a bit formulaic but it had some great lines, and realistically recreated the repetitive and painful nature of a relationship in meltdown.

The flat-hunting has progressed no further but Lisa and I, and some of her work colleagues, had a nice, long gin-sprinkled lunch in Covent Garden last weekend, followed by a bit of shopping – another of those blissful city afternoons that makes me long for the autumn, when all this will be possible without an hour’s journey each way on the Shepperton train.

Coffee, Ice Cream & London in the Summer

Yesterday I had one of those perfect London afternoons – affogato (black coffee over vanilla ice cream) and book browsing on the South Bank, followed by dinner and an evening at Sadler’s Wells. I was there to see a production of Carmen by the Catalan Compania Metros. The choreography was a blend of modern dance and flamenco accompanied by extracts from Bizet’s opera. It was intense and alluring and quite beautiful, even if a clear emotional narrative never really emerged.

The dancing was very striking and compelling to watch especially when the rhythm was beaten out solely in handclaps, finger-clicks and the stamping of feet. The costumes were vibrant and the set created a suitably sultry atmosphere. The ending however was curiously underwhelming, with water cascading over the stage but none of the impact of real tragedy.

In other news, the search for a new place to live continues slowly but surely. Lisa and I have a rough idea of our budget and our preferred location. We had a cursory look at estate agents’ windows a couple of weeks ago (an excursion that happily gave way to another of those perfect sunny, city afternoons, lounging in a Clapham café for hours) and we will begin looking in earnest when I get back from Paris.