The Moment Present. And Weather.

“Best to take the moment present as a present of the moment.”  And that line, like so many lines, well it’s just thrown away, a moment of a throw away moment.  Which in the end is what makes Sondheim so appealing yet infuriating, all the peripherals are even better than the whole and you envy him for it.

“Life is so unpleasant.  You must know that as a peasant.”  Did Sondheim just dream this stuff in his sleep?  Did he wake up in the morning with scrawled notes from his dreams, “Shouldn’ts and shoulds” in chicken scratch?  Shouldn’ts and shoulds.  So nonsensical and so perfect and just sung as a passing thought.

If we only did one thing in our whirlwind culture crawl across London it was the superb Bridge transfer of Into the Woods at the Noel Coward.  Not a weak spot in the cast, all 17 of them.  And whereas the movie (uggh, the movie, a clash of Hollywood ego and the inability of Hollywood A-listers to lean into ensemble) is all “look at me, I’m doing Sondheim!”, the West End version was this spectacular layered tribute, all the cogs in perfect synchronicity.

And then, just as you finish the gut busting duet of two princes singing Agony (on Rapunzel, “High in her tower, She sits by the hour, Maintaining her hair, Blithe and becoming, And frequently humming, A lighthearted air” cut to a screeching cat in heat), the baker and Cinderella sing No One Is Alone (“people make mistakes, holding to their own, thinking they’re alone…”) and not a dry eye in the house.  Oof.

But that is of course not all we got up to.  Going back a day or so to the start, like TV in the 2020s always saves the beginning to episode three, we headed out to YVR for an afternoon departure on BA to LHR.  BA has new biz seating in the reverse herringbone style but, alas, despite this being a new-ish Dreamliner, we were crammed into the smallest biz pods on the planet in a staggered forward/backwards.  First world problems I know.

Too early to check-in upon arrival, fortunately we had access to the arrivals lounge where we took a shower, had a coffee, and sorted out our devices.  We checked-in to our “rental” in Earl’s Court at three precisely.  Great space, convenient location, comfortable bed; it could use a little love, a few touch ups, some How Clean is Your House comfort.  But no complaints.

Saturday up bright and early.  We did a brisk neighbourhood walk before the drizzle set in then, once it became properly wet, tubed to the Southbank where we joined a National Theatre tour.  No pictures allowed…  But fascinating all the same. 

The last time I did the NT tour, the only time I did the tour, was 1981 with Nan.  Not much has changed.  There’s still 1,000 FTEs making all the sets and costumes and, as is the case in the upcoming Jungle Book, puppets.  The seats in the Olivier auditorium are still purple (Laurence’s favourite colour), and the brutalist concrete exterior is still famously impossible to navigate.

I had to lift the horse head pic from the web. It was used in a production of the Bacchae. It’s about 7x larger than an actual horse’s head, carved from polystyrene, and it is just handing in the props room, as if dripping fake blood onto the shop floor.

Following the tour we walked through the wet to Covent Garden then onto the Noel Coward for Into the Woods.  Did I mention above, um, anything good about it?

Afterwards, pre-theatre dinner at a swanky little spot called Cora Pearl, where they brought me a white wine when I’d ordered red and two sets of starters.  That left us just enough time to weave through the West End hordes to the Trafalgar for Oh Mary! which was, yes, hysterical (if every line and segue and aside reeked of Cole Escola as opposed to whomever is chosen as their replacement).

On the Sunday it was sunny and blustery and autumnal.  And just as we’d conquered jetlag we faced the extra hour of sleep as the clocks went back. 

We walked the hour or so from Earl’s Court to Victoria, caught a train to Norbury, and had a sensationally grand Sunday lunch with Michelle and Phil (smoked salmon on soda bread, beef bourguignon with roast potatoes and veg, apple tart, a cheese course to boot!).  Then back to Victoria and walked to the hotel; we needed the 18,000 steps.

On Monday more weather; sun, wind, drizzle, cloud.  You get some weather, you get some weather, everyone gets some weather.  It was too mucky for the planned agenda (Stephen to Hampton Court, I was off to a loop walk from Shoreham to Otford) so we made it a city day.  In the morning we dropped into the Tate Britain; although we’d both been at the Tate Modern several times it had been, by my reckoning, a few decades since visiting the Britain (which, when I was a teenager and poor was a sensational refuge with its free movie screenings and exceptional galleries).

Above: Tate Britain. Below: Vancouver Art Gallery. Shurely shome mishtake?

Afterwards we walked into Sloane Square, Stephen went to the Saatchi gallery and Holland House, I meandered through the various SW post codes back to the hotel.  In the evening another lovely pre-theatre dinner at a place called Henri, and onto the Donmar Warehouse for Ilford Boy.  Not sure what we were expecting (the story is a family arc over the 80s and 90s in London) but it was pitch perfect and both funny and deeply felt.

So that was our pre-Europe manic culture drop.  Here’s the homework (contrast and compare):

“What’s so intriguing, as half so fatiguing, as what’s out of reach?”  Stephen Sondheim

“You’re never in love with the people you love.  Being in love is all the anticipation.  It can’t really be there when you’re actually with him.”  Peter Hujar

“Because although eating honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he [Winnie-the-Pooh] didn’t know what it was called.”   A. A. Milne