The Play is the Thing

Up late.  Was it any wonder?

Another cool windy day.  It had rained but was dry A.M.  Didn’t hear from my friend Jean Paul so decided to see about tickets for the theatre.  The two shows I was pining to see were Berenice at the Donmar and Allan Bennett’s latest, People, at the National.  No chance for either.  Decided to try the National anyway, so jumped in a cab at Trafalgar Square.  Didn’t know, however, that all the roads and several bridges were closed in preparation for Remembrance Day services Sunday.  Cab driver was pleasant, and gave me a special tour of the back end of Westminster, but ten pounds later I was only just over the Waterloo Bridge.  All was not lost as I did score tickets for Scenes of an Execution at the Lyttleton.

Arrived at the 02 with doubles underway.  Today, unlike all the other sessions, I was at the reverse end of the court, under the media booths.  That put me at a disadvantage to see the VIP section where, again, Sir Ian was in residence, as well as Richard Wilson, an actor I don’t know but who got huge applause and is much loved for an old catchphrase “I don’t believe it.”

The Bryan Brothers made a series of egregious errors and played lackadaisical but nevertheless brought it to a set apiece before the mandatory 10 point tiebreak.  At that point Paes/Stepanek stepped on the gas and brought it home.  It looked like Andy Roddick was in the player’s box, but why he would be in London is anyone’s guess.

Laziest flash-free no-zoom pic from a spectator seat ever.  Delpo in the near court, Fed receiving.

November 10, 2012, Roger Federer and Juan Martin Del Potro.  Fed can go 3-0 here and pull it out for the tourny.  He doesn’t, and that’s a shame.  He comes out first set with his A- game, some hot shots, some not so hot, and is ultimately Delpo’s toy.  His myriad unforced errors told the whole story.  But he was scintillating in the second.  One thing that simply doesn’t translate to TV is his touch.  You can appreciate his remarkable shot selection and the variety of his game, but you can’t get a sense of how he brushes the ball, pounds it, slams it, touches it, all in a single rally.  He really is a perfectionist.  But when it came to the third set he faltered at the start and never regained his poise.  His post-30 game seems to be characterized by flashes of brilliance rather than the pre-30 consistency.  A wide kick-up serve at only 108 mph or so served him very well, but he only went there a few times, yet each one was a winner.

Delpo, who even at his best looks lazy (if he was an animal it would be Eeyore, his Spanish even has a bit of that drawl), had a determined focus and relentless returns despite the lope and sulk.  They both suffered bad line calls, Delpo once from the umpire even, and both three times wrong from a single linesman, and each gave us the tweener, Delpo successfully, Fed not, so it was up, down, entertaining and taut.  But by the end, the bitter end, Fed fell away and Juan Martin seized the moment.  Great tennis nonetheless.

Made my way back to the Sheraton but instead of transferring at Green Park I transferred at Westminster and stopped at Sloane Square to pick up some fruit and water at Partridges.  There was a Saturday market in the common area west, including of all things a children’s choir singing Christmas carols.  It did seem a bit premature for Good King Wenceslas...

Quick turn around for the theatre at, yes, 7:30.  Theatre is always at 8 Stephen says!  Howard Barker suffered great controversy in the early 80s for a National production of The Romans in Britain.  Or so I remembered having seen it.  But memory had played a trick; that was Howard Brenton.  Barker, an accomplished dramatist, not (apparently) much produced in the UK, is a different entity. 

Scenes from an Execution is, on the exterior anyway, a play about art.  Serious, with an intellectual bent, but passionate on its subject.  The thing about sincere attempts at dealing with art—think Pollock or Caravaggio—is that they have a tendency to either be theatrically indulgent or didactic.  It’s a trick to get it right.  Maugham’s Moon and Sixpence I thought was the perfect balance—and you could probably read it in less than two and three quarter hours...  I would say, on the level of being about art, SfaE wasn’t a success.  But of course, as a remount from the 80s, it must have something?  And, yes, metaphorically it’s all about politics, social and sexual mores, and much other of an intellectual vein, hung on the artist’s easel.  The crux is, though, whether truth is a service to society.  And in this sense, it is rather poignant, given Julian Assange holed up in an embassy for revealing secrets and one monumental scandal following another in China, the Arab world, India, etc., despite such ardent attempts to defend the status quo.  There is, too, a sort of Elizabeth Kubler Ross element, of moving through truth and its value (and this isn’t offhand; the dramatist literally shifts through denial, anger, bargaining, depression—“oh why am I being bad to artists, the only people I truly love”—to acceptance.  A little bit of an obvious yawn).  Even as society understands and accepts a new paradigm does it just become the ruse for which to hang another mythology on?  And so forth.  And you can see by my description that while The Bodyguard on the Strand was standing room only, Scenes from an Execution had good seats available right up until performance.

The artists considers the bum.  And lest you think I'm joking, I'm not.  That's the bit.  Geddit?

Fiona Shaw, best known perhaps for True Blood, gave a signal performance as a feminist artist, but the standout was Jay Simpson as The Doge.  For me, the play was erratic and at times artistically extravagant.  But the design was spectacular.  A much used third person commentator in the first act, a character called The Sketchbook, appears as if a video, suspended in a white box, to start.  The box is propelled toward the audience giving the impression of a zoom lens.  It was absolutely compelling.  Dramatic lighting, shadow, scrims and oversized set pieces were brilliant.  But the costumes, well the costumes, the rags which weren’t so ragged and the finery which was not so fine, and the shoes versus boots and the whole palette of the clothing was not only uneven but confusing.  Period piece?  Yes, no?

View From Waterloo Bridge, clipped by someone with the chops for night photos.

Afterward I did a very sentimental thing, from back in the days when I lived in Fulham.  I walked across the Waterloo bridge—maybe the least architecturally interesting bridge in Europe but with the most expansive view of the glorious London skyline, from St. Paul’s to the Eye to the HP—and caught a bus home.  Of course when I was young and broke I would walk as far as I had to before boarding the 22 or 11 (to pay a lower fare), but I hopped on an 11 on the Strand which beckoned, it jetted past the Savoy, turned towards the Thames at Trafalgar Square, whipped past the HP and Westminster Abbey, and then sped through Victoria towards Sloane Square along tony Hospital Rd.  There is nothing quite like the top front seat on a double decker wildly negotiating the twisty terrain of central London (not in traffic).  Back at the chic hotel there were young elites teeming through the common areas at, what the signage proclaimed was, Anissa’s 18^th.  It seems impossible to get to bed before midnight; at least I'm not alone.

Different versions of the lights around and on Sloane Square