Dateline: Portsmouth and London, England
Up early and off to Waterloo station for the train to Portsmouth. I love catching trains in the UK. It’s always so 1930s Agatha Christie. ‘I say old chap, I’m off to Waterloo to catch the 9:08 for Portsmouth via Stepney on Green, Twickenham and Tooting Bec.’ I know what I just wrote is a geographic impossibility as they are stations on different rail lines, but let me have my fun. I hadn’t been to a British seaside town in some years, the last having been Brighton in 1984, and it was nice to see that rural towns in the UK look about the same as they always have, either from the window of a railway carriage or from walking along the high street.
The trip to Portsmouth was uneventful. The ASO gang that went headed off en masse to the D-Day museum which was very well done. The centerpiece is an 83 meter long embroidery in 34 panels which tells the story of the Allied Invasion, inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry which detailed the Norman Conquest. I suppose D-Day was sort of the reverse of that on some level. I had never heard of the Overload Embroidery before but I’m glad to have seen it. From the museum, we headed off to lunch on the harbor. The lunch was good but the restaurant’s organization of a large party was not so that curtailed a visit to the historical docks as Vickie and I had to get back to town as we had theater tickets this evening.
Tonight’s show was the new environmental/immersive production of Guys and Dolls at The Bridge Theatre that has received a great deal of positive press. We snatched a couple of last minute tickets, not the best seats, but good enough for the small theater in the round. Much has been made of the three hundred tickets for standees who surround and become part of the set moving from place to place as the set shifts around, directed by stage crew marshals costumed as New York City’s finest. We decided that our sixty plus year old knees were not up to three hours of standing, no matter how good the show, and opted for seats up in the gallery.
Guys and Dolls is an old chestnut but this production is brilliant in terms of its staging. I’m not going to give away all of the tricks in the set and the stage and how new life has been breathed into a seventy five year old show but I was captivated from Runyonland on. And I have rarely seen a show that creates such an atmosphere of exuberant joy in an audience which makes the post curtain call dance party seem like a necessary expression for both cast and audience. An understudy was on for Sky who probably doesn’t have the voice of the principal but otherwise the performances were top notch, especially Adelaide who was funny and endearing rather than annoying. Arvide remains a bucket list role for me so if anyone reading this is planning a future RMTC or VST season, keep that in mind.
The Bridge Theater is just below Tower Bridge so we got to walk across it once in the late afternoon golden hour light, and once in the dark with the city lit up. Movie London would have you believe that Tower Bridge is just downstream of Parliament. It’s actually about three miles away. I think we’ll be down in Westminster tomorrow and we’ll see if the weather continues to hold and there’s a possibility of some good pictures of the houses of Parliament then. Both Vickie and I have been to London multiple times so we haven’t felt a particular need to hit the usual tourist spots but we’re picking up some of the classic views on the way to and from theater. The weather remains perfect for walking. Mid 50s in the early morning warming up to the 70s as the sun comes out. It warms the cockles of my Seattle heart. I (and my pedometer) are happy.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 