June 7

To start the day we went back to the amazing Lebanese restaurant Comptoir Libanais. This was more for the amazing food than it was for the 30% discount card they gave us the other day – but the discount didn’t hurt. All the food was amazing once again. I had smoked salmon with scrambled egg, Perry had a (turkey) bacon sandwich and some incredible looking granola.

After that we were straight on to the train (District line to Whitechapel, Overground to Shoreditch High Street) to visit (no surprise here) Shoreditch. Why? Because it has a cat cafe, and cats are the best, and therefore, visiting cats is also the best :). Fun fact (for nerds) – when changing at Whitechapel, the London Overground platforms are under the ground, and if you look up through a gap, you can see the Undergound platforms running above ground. Makes perfect sense…

Shoreditch, or at least the small part we saw of it, seems to walk along a treacherously narrow path between ‘super cool urban aesthetic’ and ‘shithole’. To be fair, I think we reached Shoreditch before it woke up for the day, it must be a pretty different when it’s buzzing with people and all the shops are alive.

We did however see what is probably the best-named coffee shop ever:

It was lovely to see the cats, and like most cat cafes you get the vibe that most of the cats are kind of sick of the humans, but some of them were happy to come over for a pat. One in particular could be awarded for its persistence and dedication in trying to get to the scone that I had while I was there. No swiping, no complaining, just a constant pushing, or jumping from above or below, to get to the table to get to the scone and nothing but nothing could discourage young Zara until she got what she wanted. I ate as quick as I could, and was relieved to hand the empty plate back to one of the staff so I could finally chill and not worry about Zara eating things she really shouldn’t. But by god she tried – and I guess more often than not she probably gets what she wants. It was a lovely experience. Here are, of course, some cat pictures.

We left Shoreditch for the first show of today. I’d read some rave reviews, well, headlines, so it all sounded pretty encouraging. So, time to head over again to Leicester Square, to Wyndham’s Theatre.

It is the unwritten rule of going to the theatre, that the people sitting in the middle of any given row, will always be last to arrive, ensuring everyone has to stand up and let them awkwardly squeeze past. I swear it happens near every time. Today’s matinee of Oklahoma! was no exception. Held at the surprisingly little Wyndham’s theatre. It was a surprise almost immediately upon walking in to see a bright, breezy pine-panelled stage, with bright pine tables and pale pine folding chairs. Not what at what I’d be expecting based on the movie. The most effective piece of scene setting was done by racks of rifles on each side of the stage (120 in total), and also on the fronts of the theatre boxes. So many guns, it leaves no doubt about the country in which this particular show is set.

It started in an interesting way, with the whole cast wandering on stage, and just hanging around until it was their turn to say their lines. The house lights stayed just as bright as the stage, perhaps a way to show us audience folk that we’re a part of the conversation unfolding. The waiting cast member thing felt a bit absurdist if that’s the word, suddenly coming to life when it’s their turn to speak and then turning back into shop dummies in the background until it was their turn again. There was very little if any setting of location, the characters could have been anywhere (well, anywhere in Oklahoma) as we watched their lives unfold.

The music was pared down, to a very small and talented string-based band with about 7 members, sitting directly in front of the audience. The cast were all excellent, including Arthur Darvill ( he was in Dr Who for a few years) as Curley. Great singers, all. And the guy playing Jud was genuinely haunting, giving us an extremely realistic portrayal of a deeply troubled soul.

While the audience mostly stayed bathed in light, at some times, to emphasise points I really couldn’t put my finger on, the audience lights would be off and the stage would turn dark green, or dark orange, but as for why, it was never really clear why it was going on.

Things then very much took a turn for the just-plain-weird when it’s time for our Curley to visit Jud. (They’re both after the same girl. Hello, tragic love story). They grab a microphone each and then without warning the entire theatre is plunged into absolute pitch blackness while they have their conversation. Not so much as a pilot light or an exit sign, you really could not see a single thing. Maybe that’s to make us feel as uncomfortable as their conversation was, or to be a little too literal in portraying the darkness of Jud’s soul, I just don’t know. And then, let’s make it weirder. When they start up the next song,a minimum of light is added and there’s someone with a video camera, with an extreme closeup on Judd’s face which is projected on to the whole back of the stage. It’s a bit too avant-garde for me, I’m not really understanding the point of it. Eventually we get back to our everything-is-lit normality. Sometimes the cast sing freely, other times they grab microphones, because, um, reasons? Again, try as I might, I’m just not quite picking up what they’re putting down, so to speak. Slightly confused, it was then time for intermission. And ice-cream. Yay!

Act Two started with what can I say, something that that took Weird in from the cold, fed it, cared for it, encouraged it to grow and educated it until it graduated from the University of Batshit Crazy. An extended, waaaaaay over-extended dream sequence from a dancer who is extremely athletic, extremely capable, no doubt an incredible dancer… however this was just way too much for way too long . The whole theatre (not just the completely bare stage) filled with smoke as she pranced around in circles like a pony for a minute, slapping herself as she went , followed by many, many more minutes of silliness/modern dance (see caveat below), accompanied by a super loud distorted guitar soundtrack. (The band hadn’t come back from intermission. Can you blame them). To me, it was more of a “teens trying to be edgy teens” move than a super-modern dream sequence. It just kept going on. And on. And on. Who knows, perhaps it was an homage to all the unrelated ballet dance breaks that seeemd to turn up in a lot of 1950s musicals (Singin’ in the Rain, I’m looking at you)…but if that’s what it was, even on that level it didn’t work for me.

Then, as the dancing continued, a cowboy boot dropped from the ceiling, thudding violently on to the stage. And another, and another, and another. I wish they’d dropped a little bit of context for us instead. Maybe it was quite literally ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’ but there were way too many shoes and it just ended up looking silly, even if it was trying to infer that the decision our girl has to make is not an easy one. I guess, I’m one of those unsophisticated theatre goers who wouldn’t understand culture if I was hit over the head with it (or perhaps with a falling boot), but for me, this marked the point where the magic spell of the theatre was broken, the trust was gone, and from that point on I just wanted the show to reach whatever wretched conclusion it was going to put us through, as soon as possible, so I didn’t have to watch any more of it.

Later, there was another full-blackout sequence, maybe this is to again prove the darkness of Jud’s soul or his dark thoughts or to make us as uncomfortable as the other character was feeling…but it smelt more like a lack of imagination, an overused trick. By the end (spoiler alert) our two main characters, just married, find themselves and their lovey white wedding clothes covered in blood and looking horrified while everyone else sings the really-quite-jolly Oklahoma theme turne around them, pretty much dancing around a corpse. Yes, as an audience we were even robbed of being allowed the enjoy the final song, but I’d already mentally checked out of the theatre so to speak, so I guess I wasn’t surprised that this bit would be all ‘oooh, so edgy’ and different, too. Or as my initial rough notes said “All that and a shit ending, we weren’t even allowed to enjoy the song”.

If you take the word Oklahoma, rearrange the letters, take some away and add some more, you get “OK so what on earth was it trying to do ?” And for this one, I don’t really have a good answer. It’s a NOklahoma from me.

I have to add a few caveats to all of the above – I’m an old white guy who doesn’t understand modern dance, I’ve got to be aware of my own unconscious biases, and I have to reiterate that the performers themselves were brilliant. I just can’t help but think the way it was realised as a whole was less than the sum of its parts. It’s just my opinion, and maybe I’m wrong.

Ok, let’s move on. We moved back to the hotel to pick up jackets we hadn’t needed thanks to the lovely warm London weather (not a phrase you hear everyday, but something we were incredibly fortunate to experience, every single day we were here). Then we popped back on the Piccadilly Line to Holborn, on the way to our final show of this incredible holiday : Mrs Doubtfire.

We grabbed a quick dinner at The Doner Guy and I have to say, best kebabs in London – at least out of the ones that we’ve had. Delicious. Highly recommended. Quick friendly service, all in all, a great feed.

Off to the theatre, sit down, wait for the people in the middle of the rows arriving at the last minute, all the usual stuff, and the show began. The beginning was really smart, playing into an extension of the standard “please switch off your mobile phone” announcements that most patrons never seem to heed. It was our protagonist making the announcement, showing his versatility, trying different voices, leading to him getting sacked thus setting the scene for our show.

Thank goodness, this was not Mrs Bin Fire, it turned out to be a good (if not ‘Ooh, so edgy!’) show. A show like this completely hinges upon the ability of its star to carry the story, and Gabriel Vick delivered in spades, perfectly playing the loving-yep-imperfect Dad. When you think about it, setting up a sophisticated ruse and lying to your wife just you can subvert the law and gain access to your children when a court has ruled otherwise – that’s really quite a problematic situation. But, it leads to comedy, so all is forgiven right?

It was going so well, then 20 minutes in there were a few almighty bangs and crashes from the side of the stage, a scene ended a bit strangely with an awkward silence. The the stage manager popped up on the side of the stage. “I’m sorry, we’ve experienced a small problem and will need to pause the show for a few minutes. Thank you”. I guess that’s the peril of live theatre, at any minute everything can come unstuck. I’m dying to know what it was, but with no inside knowledge I guess it’ll remain a mystery. But as soon as the next scene started, a big piece of scenery rolled on, so I guess either it fell off its sled or something else got in the way and it couldn’t move where it needed to. Or one of a thousand other things that probably happen in the theatre, what would I know, I’m just the audience – but part of a very grateful audience once the show continued, problem free, from that point onward.

The highlight was the ‘make me a woman’ scene that can be seen on YouTube, it was cleverly and funnily done. The rest of the show maybe never quite reached that height, but the performances were great, the child actors could hold a tune, and despite the expected sugar-coated happy ending, it didn’t lapse completely into an over-sweetened confection. Well, maybe a tiny bit. But it’s the kind of show where you had a fair idea of what you in for, and it delivered in spades.

I guess it was a fitting end, for our final show on this trip. We walked out of our final theatre show, caught our final Piccadilly Tube train out of Covent Garden, and headed back for the last night in our London hotel. Time to start thinking about the unstoppable encroachment of reality back into our lives. But that can wait for tomorrow.