44 Hours in London

Early last year, I received an incredibly generous birthday present: a £500 voucher for theatres in the West End in London.
I used half of it last July to go and see Hamilton and Les Miserables, but in November I realised I didn’t have much time left to use the rest of it, so I booked my tickets well in advance for a couple more shows…
…so last weekend the time came to honour my commitment. I had originally planned to stay a few hours longer, but some work-related duties required me to exchange my morning train ticket for an afternoon one, and further shorten what was already going to be a short trip.

The Eurostar lobby and trip

There used to be a time when I travelled to the UK once a month. In 2014 the Eurostar waiting area - even the part for the ‘common mortals’ - was a nice area with shops and a bar. It had a lot of character.

I don’t know whether due to COVID-19, or pre-existing plans, all of that has progressively disappeared. Now, after the security checks, you end up in a very-well-lit very-airport-like Duty-Free shop, where you can get coffee from a vending machine. It really saddened me. And I’ve started cursing Capitalism in my head. Not for the last time on the trip.

The train ride itself was pleasantly and surprisingly quiet, considering that a couple of trains had been cancelled on the same day. So I didn’t need to have an elbow fight with the occupant of the neighbouring seat, and I could watch a film on my iPad in absolute peace.

And the train arrived on time!

The Hotel

Being on time allowed me to take a 25-minute walk to the hotel, instead of taking the Tube. Actually, I didn’t use public transport at all during my whole stay, which was great - despite the cold and the occasional drizzle.

Since I travel alone, I prefer choosing some comfort, so if possible I opt for four-star hotels. In London, the situation is bizarre because any hotel stay costs an exorbitant amount of money: during a previous trip I chose a smaller, family-managed 3-star place, with the result that I couldn’t sleep for two nights because of the total lack of insulation - both thermal and acoustic. 
With a little luck, a decent 4-star costs only slightly more. This time, I was particularly lucky because my hotel was in a great position, especially to reach the theatre district.

Bullet-point review of the hotel (name and address available on demand):

• Pros: clean rooms, very comfortable bed and pillows, the possibility to refill a bottle with water anytime.
• Cons: the room windows overlooked a very busy (including at night) road, so I had to use earplugs to be able to sleep; the breakfast options were great for pursuers of an English breakfast, but the choice of a Continental variant was very limited (meaning: just pain au chocolat and two variants of cereals); I couldn’t use the huge flat screen to watch anything interesting because my devices wouldn’t connect.
• Unforgivable cons: when spending almost €200 per night, having to pay extra to get an espresso or a cappuccino at breakfast is a capital sin.
• Things I’m not sure about: rooms are serviced every other day. As much as I don’t care for daily service, this feels to me like the most recent way to disguise hotel savings under the façade of ’environmental impact’.

First show - My Neighbo(u)r Totoro

I love musicals, but I’ve already watched the ones that are currently on and that I’m interested in (well, aside from Cabaret. I should have booked Cabaret). I don’t particularly enjoy plays based on films, but I heard great feedback about the theatrical version of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 classic. I’m not the biggest fan, but I was curious about how they would translate the cartoon magical creatures onto the stage.

It was an absolute delight. From the (grown-up) actresses channelling the young protagonists of the film, to the live band distributed on the trees above the stage, from the beautiful voice of the live singer (the lyrics were half in Japanese and half in English) to an actual huge Totoro physically there with the actors, everything was amazing and literally awesome.

I especially appreciated the high visibility given to the masterful puppeteers animating all creatures big and small: not hidden behind their characters, instead presenting themselves on the stage with their faces clearly visible, before covering them with a black veil and ‘disappearing’ to work their magic.

As usual, taking pictures was forbidden but you can get an idea from the official website.

Second show - Elektra

Another great opportunity that the West End often gives is seeing movie stars on stage: in the past I’ve had the opportunity of watching plays featuring Olivia Williams and Matthew Fox, Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss, Matthew Modine. I don’t think there’s another place in Europe where it happens that often (although, I saw Cate Blanchett play in Paris).

There are currently a few options, that show some sort of ‘return of investment’ for actors and theatres involved in big Hollywood productions: there’s Much Ado About Nothing featuring Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell - both owing their international fame to the MCU, or Sophocles’ Oedipus starring Rami Malek and Game of Thrones’ Indira Varma. I opted, though, for an Oscar winner I like better (and a play with better reviews): still Sophokles (this time spelled with a K), but Elektra (also with a K), with by Brie Larson in the titular role and with Stockard Channing as Clitemnestra. I have been following Larson’s career since Short Term 12 ¹, long before her Academy-awarded role in Room and before Captain Marvel, so her theatrical debut was the clear choice for me.

This is, of course, a classic Greek tragedy about a woman wanting revenge after her father’s rival has killed him and married her mother, revisited with a punk tone (that’s what all the Ks are about) and barebones scenography. 

Larson was good, although her role requires her to be perennially angry and mourning, therefore she is not given a lot of range. She was also the only actor on stage using a hand-held microphone; this was used for some distortion effects here and there, but it felt a bit jarring - and the difference in loudness between her and the rest of the cast.

Also, to be noted that as a non-native English speaker, I have probably missed the nuances and beauty of the poetic translation of the text.

What I liked best was the six-women chorus that, faithful to classic theatre, accompanies and interacts with the lead roles.

Still, when Elektra wondered whether she should make her brother an avenger, an inevitable Marvel-related chuckle ran through the audience.

Museums

No trip to London is complete for me without a visit to the Tate Modern. 

This time around, there was no temporary exhibition I felt compelled to see, so I chose the one with a name that evokes a film, a Giorgio Moroder song, and the Internet: Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet. 

Jokes aside, it was the more interesting option. I had read some disappointed reactions about it, and, all in all, I must agree that it felt a bit overpriced, at least compared to my appreciation and to the expectations one has about a Tate initiative.

Probably it’s because a lot of the works of art are big electronic/magnetic machines, that require a lot of space to provide light or auditory experiences that, although no doubt groundbreaking in the ’60s and ’70s, are not that impressive today.

Plus some of the works, for preservation reasons, only worked for a limited time every hour, making their fruition a bit cumbersome.

Still, I enjoyed the Vitrines technique by Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, obtaining a sort of analogue pixelation by putting a painting or a TV screen behind corrugated glass (here is a better picture of the same work of art).

And I learnt about Arte Programmata, an Italian movement born in the 1960s all about art based on movement and mathematics, promoted by none other than Umberto Eco. This is a starting point for further explorations on the topic.

Having decided to have dinner after Elektra, I had some time to kill before the show, so I called in at the National Gallery to refresh my appreciation of my beloved Paolo Uccello and Piero Della Francesca paintings. Unfortunately, the museum is in the middle of a reorganisation for a huge exhibition coming in May, so most of the must sees are just not on display at the moment. Caravaggio’s works are available, as are Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, but the visit took much less time than I anticipated. On the good side, I spotted a Goya painting I didn’t remember (above).

So I moved around the corner to the National Portrait Gallery - usually not one of my favourite museums. Somehow I didn’t realise there was a temporary exhibition of Edvard Munch’s portrait, so I wandered around the permanent collection, which was more enjoyable than I remembered.

Food

A small win: I managed to avoid Pret-à-manger altogether, although it helps that I had only two meals to cover.

After a lot of internal debating, I climbed the stairs up to the first floor of The Chandos pub, just above Trafalgar Square, and had a great classic fish-and-chips in a semi-deserted room.

For the evening, since Elektra only lasted 75 minutes, I opted for eating after the show, at the well-tested ‘French’ restaurant chain Côte Brasserie, right in front of the theatre.

Shopping

Where, by ‘shopping’, I mean Blu-Ray discs.

One obligatory stop is the BFI shop; differently from previous years, when I was explicitly looking for the Ingmar Bergman box sets, I didn’t have a clear goal in mind. I left empty-handed, and wondering whether I should have bought an ‘Early Hitchcock’ boxset which looked very attractive but also was too expensive (and bulky for my luggage). Pity that I can’t find a mention of it anywhere online (and it didn’t look like one StudioCanal just released).

The other mandatory visit is Fopp in Covent Garden. My intention there was to find the new edition of The Cell by Arrow Video, and in addition I found bargain ‘vanilla’ discs for It Follows (6 pounds!) and The Descent.