June 13, 2023

Dateline: Birmingham, Alabama –

A brief entry to let everyone know that I have returned safely from across the pond and will be settling back into Birmingham life over the next few days. I return to work tomorrow afternoon, just in time to pack my things so that the UAB Geriatrics Clinic can move from the 3rd floor to the 4th floor at the end of the week, replacing the Family Practice Clinic which moved from the 4th floor to the 3rd floor. No one has been able to explain to me why this change was necessary for financial, patient care or aesthetic issues. I have a feeling an administrator, working at home during the pandemic came up with the plan as part of a reason to justify salary. I’ve also going to have to get cracking on A Midsummer Night’s Dream if we’re going to begin rehearsals in two weeks.

Yesterday, the last full day in London, was a low key day. Vickie went off on the Harry Potter studio tour to look at the sets and props and costumes from the movie franchise and had a great time. I didn’t go as I’m still working out my rather complicated relationship with the Potterverse and just didn’t feel it was the right time for me to immerse myself in that. Both the books and the films are very bound up in my memories with Steve’s and Tommy’s illnesses and other issues and I didn’t want to pick the scabs on those wounds at this point. I got up, and headed over to Carnaby street and Covent Garden to have breakfast with Natalie Riegel whom I have watched mature from a theater kid to competent young woman over the course of the last couple of decades. She’s currently working for the National Theatre in their production department in an outreach position and loving it. We had a long conversation about theater, reminiscences, and what it’s like to be an American expatriate living and working in London. (She loves it).

After breakfast, I did some shopping, wandered the West End a bit, an then decided a nap was in order and headed back to the hotel for a bit to snooze and rest up for the grueling travel day to come. I then had a wander around Kensington and Knightsbridge, enjoying the first break in the weather all week with a smattering of raindrops and the temperature descending out of the 80s for the first time in several days. While the hotel had air conditioning, it was having difficulties keeping up with multiple days running of weather in the 80s, something that used to be a rare occurrence in the UK but which is becoming more routine with climate change.

Vickie returned from Hogwarts and we headed back to the West End for dinner and a show. (Dinner – Vietnamese convenient to the Theatre Royal on the Haymarket – edible, but not anything special. ) Our choices of play were somewhat limited as it was Monday evening and that’s traditionally a dark evening for most productions. After seeing what was available, we chose the first public performance of a new production of Dario Fo’s ‘Accidental Death of an Anarchist’. Fo, who was all the rage when I was in college, and eventually won the Nobel for literature for his mordant satires of capitalism and his laceration of Western thought processes. This play, which premiered in 1970, and which centers around the death of a likely innocent suspect while in police custody, is topical and timely to our present day. Fo’s theatrical techniques, which harken back to the Commedia Del Arte, require a lot of improvisation, physical comedy and topical references to have the intended impact so the current London production is, in some ways, an adaptation of the original script rather than any sort of faithful remounting. I haven’t seen a lot of Fo staged, and it has usually been in college productions that have been quite deadly so it was interesting to see a full West End mounting which uses a lof of fourth wall breaking, Brechtian alienation techniques, and societal mirroring to get the points across.

I ended up liking it a lot, but not loving it. It may be, as this was the first public performance, that the piece hasn’t quite gelled yet. The female lead had a bit of an impenetrable dialect and no concept of how to hold for laughter which should be corrected by the end of the week. The male lead, while very good, starts his performance at a nine and then dials it up to eleven. It needs more rhythm and build. I’d tell you who the actors were but London theater has abandoned physical programs and I’m hopeless with name retention unless it’s someone I know from other context. The director seems to have found a blend of The San Francisco Mime Troop, Agitprop, Monty Python, and Joe Orton which holds the piece together and the audience was laughing and recognizing it as a comedy, but with very serious themes underlying.

This morning, we got up, packed out bags and boarded a bus for Heathrow. And so began a very long process by bus, foot, airplane, second but, and Uber, dropping us off at the Condo roughly 16 hours after we began. It was better than the 24 hour process from the last trip as we weren’t routed through Amsterdam this time around. During all of this, my travel agent called and I now have a firm booking on a fall trip for me. Expect more travelogue in October.

As for now, I am heading for bed and trying to reorient myself to the Central Time Zone.