Judie’s sister Linda arrived as Jane and Judy left on Tuesday and I spent Wednesday doing some London Stuff with her.

“The Caretaker”: We went to the Old Vic to see a production of “The Caretaker”. It is one of Harold Pinter’s earlier great plays, first performed in 1960 with Donald Pleasance and Alan Bates. It is a play about three men who are broken in various ways. It all takes place in a wreck of an attic festooned with junk. It begins as Aston, the tenant of this dump, brings a vagrant (Davies) back with him. The vagrant ends up staying there for some time. Aston has a threatening younger brother, Mike, who actually owns the place, who comes around periodically. Actually very little happens over almost three fascinating hours, over-layered with a feeling that something just dreadful will befall these guys. This is the kind of play that you can probably play in different ways. In this version, the humor is stressed, but only up to a point. Daniel Mays is just terrific as Aston, who  has a famous speech in which he talks about his time in an asylum, delivered in a masterful low-key way. (Pinter’s directorial instructions had been that Aston should be a man who has not had a conversation with any one for ten years and will not peak to anyone for twenty more when the play ends.) Mick, played by George MacKay, is also wonderful and is menacing just in the way he speaks and pauses and stares at Davies. He has some famous long riffs which he delivers in a stunning way. The play really revolves around Davies, who never leaves the stage. He is played by Timothy Spall (probably best known for playing Peter Pettigrew in the “Harry Potter”movies and J.M.W. Turner in the recent biopic). He plays him as a disgusting, smelly, selfish bum, who is simultaneously repulsive and appealing, funny and horrifying, dangerous and helpless. I thought it was an effective interpretation and it was certainly entertaining. It’s Pinter, so it is an odd and sometimes uncomfortable night out. But by the end, you are glad that you went, which I think is the essence of good theatre.

Sir John Soane’s Museum: This is a museum I had been meaning to go to and, since Linda wanted to go, I went along. John Soane was a well-known neo-classical architect in the the period 1780-1830. He was the youngest son of a bricklayer, but apprenticed to an architect and created himself. Much of his walth came from his wife’s uncle. He designed a great number of buildings in the neo-classical style (including the Bank of England) and believed that building in this style would cause Londoners to behave like the great Greek and Roman civilizations and lead to a sort of golden age. But his theory never really caught on and eventually the neo-classic style fell out of favor and many of his buildings were torn down, often replaced by neo-gothic structures, which Soane hated, (The neo-gothic architects had the own, similar theory that the gothic look would recall the piety of the middle ages and lead to a religious rebirth. It turns out that architecture can do many things, but it cannot change the behavior of men.) Anyway, over aperiod of years, Soane purchased three buildings at Lincoln Inn Fields and completely renovated them. The interior is designed in a unique and clever way. He is responsible for the design of art museums that brings in natural light through skylights, etc. and he uses these ideas to bring light into his house, even the basement. His picture room, which holds paintings by Hogarth and Canaletto and others, is relatively small but holds a large number of paintings by having a number of walls that swing out to reveal more artwork. Very clever. And he also collected all sorts of classical statuary and remnants, which are in a colonnade and in his study and other places. His oldest son died and his youngest was a gambler and a reprobate, so Soane decided to leave his homes and their contents to the people of England and the museum was created by a Act of Parliament shortly before his death. It is quite a place.

Freemasons: After that museum, Linda and I were walking toward Covent Garden when we saw a big building with Stars of David on the doors and a large crowd outside. It was a great big Art Deco building and it turned out to be the Freemason’s Grand Temple. Normally, we might have been able to go in (as I understand the interior is striking), but on Wednesday there seemed to be a big freemason’ enclave and literally countless older men in black suits were all converging on the place. There was camera crew there filming it. I looked it up later and it was the annual investiture of Grand Officers, a big ceremony for which tickets are required. (Since Freemasons are believed by conspiracy nuts to control the world secretly, I had been hoping that their meeting had some more interesting purpose–to decide how the Brexit vote would turn out or figure out what to do about Trump. So the stated purpose was disappointingly pedestrian, but, of course, who knows what they were really doing!?) Here are some shots of the guys in suits arriving, which don’t really do justice to the weirdness of it all. They were all carrying briefcases or bags that were a bit too large. Suspicious yet?