I was sitting at home last Thursday a little after 4:45, thinking I needed to get ready to leave to go to dinner and the theatre, when my phone buzzed and, when I looked at it, I was stunned to discover that we had a reservation for high tea at The Ritz at 5:30. This was a present from Judie’s sister, Linda, for Christmas and we had booked it some time ago and then completely forgotten about it. Thankfully, my phone hadn’t.

I called Judie and broke the news to her. She had a conference call scheduled for 5:00, so she called The Ritz to see if we could reschedule. We couldn’t, but they told her that we could be late. I went on line and cancelled our dinner reservations. As all that was going on, I was scrambling around to get dressed well enough that I could meet the dress code for tea. (We were going to the damn Ritz and they have standards.) I found our theatre tickets for the night and managed to get downstairs by 5:00. I hit the sidewalk and realized it was raining. No time to go back for an umbrella and by the time I had cut through the Old Spitalfield Market, the rain was beginning to mix with snow, the first I had seen in London. (The next morning it actually snowed less than an inch and London was almost paralyzed.) The one thing about London is that once you make it to the Tube, things move pretty quickly. The trains come every two or three minutes. So it didn’t take that long to get from Liverpool Street Station to Holborn and then switch to the Piccadilly line for Green Park. I got out of the station and there was The Ritz across the street. I had somehow managed to get there by 5:45 and Judie arrived just after 6:00.

Once we got there (and caught our breath), it really was great fun. The tea is served in a gilded dining room by waiters (all men) in tails and red vests and bow ties. It would have better if the all sounded like Jeeves. But, this being London in 2017, most of them had vaguely Eastern European accents. Linda had given us the Champagne tea, so we got to start with tea (from an extensive tea list) and flutes of their house bubbly. To eat, there were a variety of little crustless sandwiches (I was starving) and scones and clotted cream, and cakes and various little pastries. It was all very delicious, if ridiculously overpriced. But you are paying for the atmosphere and the feeling of being transported back to an earlier, simpler age, when rich people could meet in a golden room and entertain themselves with murmured conversation, while a piano tinkled in the background. A couple of photos follow.

Love-Lost and Found: The Royal Shakespeare  Company are performing two plays in repertory at the Royal Haymarket Theatre (Samuel Foote’s theatre, if any of you recall me writing about the play “Mr. Foote’s Other Leg”). After tea at The Ritz, we walked over and saw “Love’s Labour’s Lost”. It is one of Shakespeare’s early comedies and is relatively rarely performed, possibly because its references to persons of the day and it literary allusions became less familiar to audiences. It is the story of the King of Navarre and three of his associates, who all agree to foreswear the company of women for three years of philosophical studies. As soon as they do so, of course, the beautiful Princess of France with three lovely members of her court appear. The four men meet them out of politeness, but refuse to let them into the house due to their vow, and are instantly smitten. The play has wonderful language (it is sometime accused of being overwritten, but I found the lines, often in rhyming couplets, to be lovely). It is quite funny. My favorite scene was one in which each of the men appear on the roof, working on their odes of love, hide as each one appears and finally discover each other and the fact that they each are violating their vows. There are a number of other very funny scenes including one in which the four men improbably disguise themselves as Russions to visit the women, who are not fooled in the slightest and end up fooling the men. The was particularly wonderful repartee between Lord Berowne (Edward Bennett) and Rosaline (Lisa Dillon, who we had seen earlier as the lead in Stoppard’s “Hapgood” at Hampstead Theatre). The play is set in pre-World War I England (you just have to ignore all of the French references), which is really more reflected in the overall look of the truly incredible set and the costumes, at least until the end. The end is a bit of a surprise. The women had been rather toying with these four men’s affections for much of the play, but at the end accept their love. But rather than marry on the spot, as would be the conclusion of most Shakespearean plays of this type, they tell the men that they must wait a year, since the King of France has just died. As the play ends, the four men appear in army uniforms and march off to war, leaving you to wonder if the love will ever be consummated or will be lost. It is kind of a bittersweet ending. I have to admit that I probably would have enjoyed this pay more if I had been more familiar with it. As it was, I had to work hard to follow the language and the twists and turns of the plot. Bennett and Dillon were delightful in the leading roles and Nick Haverson, in the comic role of Costard, the gardener, was a riot. Another memorable performance was John Hodgkinson as Don Armando.

The next night, we were back to see “Much Ado About Nothing”, which was set in England just after World War I. Bennett and Dillon, were back, this time playing the central couple, Benedict and Beatrice. Unlike the prior night’s play, we were familiar with the play (I’d guess that many people are, even if they get confused by the names of Shakespeare’s plays sometimes). We’d seen it back in the 1980s with Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack (see related story below) and many people have seen the movie version with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. I came away even more impressed with Edward Bennett than I had been the night before. He is utterly at ease with Shakespeare’s language and has a true gift for comic timing and was charming in both parts. He looked vaguely familiar and it turns out that we saw him playing one of the scientists opposite Nicole Kidman in “Photograph 51”. He might be best known for appearing in “Hamlet”, where he was the understudy for David Tennant about ten years ago and was called on to perform on opening night when Tennant injured his back and could not go on. “Much Ado” is a tremendously entertaining play that is terribly romantic. It was very clever for the Royal Shakespeare Company to pair it with “Love’s Labour’s Lost”, as there are a number of parallels between the two plots. This production really went for the laughs and had a good deal of slapstick staging. There were some really belly laugh moments. But I did find Haverson’s performance of Dogberry to be so over the top as to be almost painful, even if it was quite funny. The same set was still remarkable (see the photo below that I took before the play began), the cast was top notch and it was a completely satisfying evening of theatre.

Vaguely Related Story: The same time we saw Derek Jacobi in the Royal Shakespeare production of “Much Ado”, he was also performing in “Cyrano”. He was, as you would expect, just wonderful. We took my father to the show, since it was one of his favorite plays and his response after seeing it was “Yeah. He was good. But he’s no Jose Ferrer.”, which was kind of ridiculous, but reflected his feeling that he had seen the ultimate performance of the part that simply could not be topped. Actually, it seems to me, this sort of attitude interferes with the simple enjoyment and magic of theatre. “He’s no Jose Ferrer” subsequently became a recurring line that we would cite when we would see a play that was a re-staging of something we’d seen earlier (especially when we were with our friends Peter and Andrea). For example, we would see Jim Parsons in “Harvey” and say “He’s no Jimmy Stewart”, not as a criticism, but in recognition that there are many ways to interpret a role and to perform it and that what makes seeing a play again played by a great actor and/or troupe of actors is actually the thrill of seeing something interpreted differently.

Administrative Note: I’m probably going to change to the premium version of Word Press, so that I can publish photos of higher quality and you won’t have to see advertising. This will change the address of this blog to nickinshoreditch.com. If you are signed up to get notifications by e-mail, this may not matter, but if you are used to just seeing it through a browser, you won’t be able to find this using the current URL. So this is a warning: If you are looking for nickinshoreditch and it isn’t popping up, then I’ve made the change. I’ll post more warnings as it happens.

Four Plays in Twenty-Seven Hours: This was a kind of a crazy idea. The National Theatre has been having a special “Young Chekhov” event in which you see three plays normally done in repertory on individual nights, all in one day. I signed us up for it, not realizing that we also had tickets at the Old Vic the night before. So it really was a marathon.

It all started with “No’s Knife” at the Old Vic. It isn’t exactly a play. It was more of a performance piece based on selections from Samuel Becket’s “Texts for Nothing”. On one level, it was an amazing interpretation by Lisa Dwan, a dancer, actor, writer and Beckett expert, as she used movement and voice changes and odd, bleak scenery and a mist machine to enliven some of Beckett’s most obscure ramblings. On the other hand, it was so plotless that it made “Waiting for Godot” seem like “The Importance of Being Ernest”. There was a lot of existential despair, reflections on nothingness and ruminations about death. There were many good moments, but the whole thing wasn’t cohesive and, in fairness, was not intended to be. We both found it difficult to concentrate fully on the stream of thoughts that were being expressed for the full 70 or 80 minutes. It was one of those things that made you feel intellectual for simply being there and a dolt for not being able to find some sort of deep theme (beyond misery and death) or a trenchant comment on the modern world. An odd evening.

The next morning, we were off to the National Theatre, which was made difficult by the weekend closure of all of the tube lines that went anywhere close to it. The three plays on the day were the early works of Chekhov and the whole thing was the inspiration of David Hare, who also created new versions of the plays. The first play, which began at 11:45, was “Platonov”, also known as “The Play Without a Title” when Chekhov wrote it at about age 20, while a medical student. It was discovered 20 years after his death and performed sporadically until 1960, when an edited version first to use the tile “Platonov” was performed with Rex Harrison as the lead. Like most Chekhov plays, it is set in a country villa and I think might be characterized as a tragic farce. The set, which was used for all three plays (since they are all mostly set in country villas) was absolutely spectacular. In this case, the villa was the home of the widow Anna Petrova, played by the wonderful Nina Sosanya, who we’d seen before. The main character, played by Scottish actor James McArdle, is supposed to be the most interesting and handsome man in the community. Like seemingly all Chekhov characters, he has money problems and is unhappy with how his life has gone. He is a bit of a misogynist but is also irresistible to women, with whom he has a series of affairs, despite being married and a father. The fact that the women in play fall for him unhesitatingly, despite his flaws, really annoyed Judie (and she regards this portrayal of women as typical of Russian writers). Putting that reasonable objection aside, McArdle did play Platonov with considerable charm and humor and there were large sections of the play that were very funny, at least until it all begins to catch up with him in the last act and a tragic ending is assured. I found the whole production to be lively and immensely enjoyable. It is a play with a number of juicy parts and the cast was great. It turns out that “Wild Honey”, by Michael Frayn, which we are going see at the Hampstead Theatre later this year, is his adaptation of “Platonov”. I’ll be curious to see if it is different.

After  a quick lunch at House, the National Theatre’s on-site restaurant, we were back in our seats at 4:00 for “Ivanov”. This was Chekhov’s first complete play and the first ever performed (in 1887). It was an initial disaster, but was restaged triumphantly two years later after Chekhov rewrote it. This play is also set in country villas and has more tragedy and less humor than “Platonov”. Ivanov, played by Geoffrey Streatfeild,  is unhappy, has money troubles, and feels like he has wasted his life. In short, he is a typical Chekhov character. (What must life have been like in the late 1800s in Russia?) His wife, played by Nina Sosanya, is dying of TB and her doctor, played by James McArdle, is an insufferable prig whose idea of the truth helps to ruin the lives of both of them. There are some other characters who give a truly amusing view of the life in that era and who keep the proceedings moving. Unfortunately, Ivanov, at the center of the action, is simply clinically depressed for the entire play and cannot get himself out of it, despite the efforts of a young neighbor, played by Olivia Vinall, to pull him out of it. It is all a effective and dauntingly realistic realistic look at dealing with profound depression. (You keep thinking “Give this guy some medication!”) But it seems to me that the main character must develop over the course of a play and Ivanov cannot and does not. It isa one note role, leading to a one note performance. We are ultimately left waiting for his inevitable suicide. The play had moments, but was the least satisfying of the three, one I would not be tempted to see again.

Finally, it was back to the Olivier Theatre at 8:00 for “The Seagull”, a more familiar Chekhov work. The set contained a good deal of water, which was used somewhat in the first two productions, but was more central to this one, which is set in a country villa on a lake. There are two interconnected plots. One concerns the relationship between Irina, the owner of the estate, a spectacularly vain and famous actress, played with wonderful self-centered energy by Anna Chancellor, and her son Konstantin, played by Joshua James, who had also had a central role in”Platonov”. Her belittling of him and the destruction of his dreams is one theme. The other involves Nina, a young, talented and beautiful woman, played by Olivia Vianall (again–more on that below), who is a neighbor and beloved by Konstanin. She is casually seduced and ruined by Trigorin, (Streatfeild is back in this role), a famous author and the lover of the actress. As in all of three plays, there is a large company of interesting characters, all played with wonderful gusto. This play is ultimately about the dreams and ambitions of the young being thwarted by their elders and is consistent with the prior two plays, in which both the two young protagonist’s youthful dreams and ideals have been unmet, leaving them in a state of perpetual disappointment. And it turns out that the other running theme of the three plays is that if you are a character in a relationship with one played by Olivia Vinall, you are doomed. In “Platonov”, she is the jilted mistress whose life is ruined by Platonov and who shoots him at the end. In “Ivanov”, she is the well-meaning young woman intent on saving Ivanov by marrying him, only to see him shoot himself. And in “The Seagull”, she is the lovely, ruined Nina, who returns in the final act to see Konstantin and delivers the final blow to him by saying that she will always love Trigorin (thereby providing more evidence for Judie’s theory about female characters and Russian authors), which leads Konstantin to shoot himself. Which is how our day of theater ended, shortly after 10:30.

100 Kazoos: The next morning, we went to New Unity. It was the tenth anniversary of Rev. Andy’s first service there and a group from the Sunday Gatherings Team decided it was important to celebrate it and finally roped me into participating. I had two ideas which I implemented when the group agreed. First, I bought blank cards and envelopes and markers, so that everyone could create a card for him at a point during the service. (I didn’t think that the organizers gave people enough time  to finish, but I suspect some people just continued to work on their messages during the collection.) The planning group wanted to do something special and less serious and I suggested that we play “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” on kazoos. It seemed like something that had both English and American elements. So we did it. I bought 100 plastic kazoos, which we passed out at the end of the service, as the Music Director gave a quick lesson on kazoo playing. (Most of the congregation had never touched a kazoo before!) A joyful noise was made.