'Head' Over Heels

It’s been a week, but I’m still on a high from meeting Anthony Stewart Head in Manchester! “Giles” from “Buffy”, the Prime Minister on “Little Britain” and, back in the day, the guy from the Nescafe couple coffee ads, he was one of the nicest, chattiest celebrities I’ve met. Love him! At the Collectormania convention, he was always available for photos and autographs and hosted two Q&A sessions which revealed he’s got a lot of new shows/films in the works, but alas no Giles spin-off as yet. In a separate Q&A session, actress Emma Caulfield (Buffy, 90210) revealed that "Tony" (as he's known) also has the softest hair of anyone she knows. After copping a quick feel after our photo (so to speak), I think she may be right. I also informed "Tony" about James Marsters upcoming concert in London in May and he may come check it out!

The Collectormania convention itself, which also starred two "Heroes" cast members! (See next post), was really focused on, well collectors and collectibles (i.e. trading cards, photos, action figures, etc.) Let me tell you, those items ain’t cheap. It’s shocking what people will pay for a framed pic of Captain Picard! Also, each of the autographs of the celebs in attendance cost 20 pounds! Needless to say, I just stuck with the Buffy duo. Convention attendance was made up of a broad swath of the population and there were some interesting sights (such as the “Furby” crew and a number of Sweeney Todd look-alikes). They had a costume contest and the Demon Barber with the most dead ringer look for Depp took home the big prize (no, it was not meat pies). Photos are now online.

Along with the convention, my friend Sarah and I packed a lot in to our two-day trip. I really enjoyed Manchester – kind of has a bit of a Chicago look/feel to it, with cool architecture/buildings, and Lots of cultural opportunities. We saw a Salsa Dance Theatre piece at the very cool Contact Theatre. While the play didn’t knock our socks off, we were quite impressed by the venue and its amazing audience. We landed the very last two tix to the show and the auditorium was packed with the most diverse cross-section of theatre-goers I’ve seen. London theaters would kill for an audience like this. We then headed to The Comedy Store to see three hilarious comedians.

Sunday brought the “UK’s largest St. Patrick’s Day Parade.” Who knew?! Alas, we were at Mr. Head’s Q&A so missed the parade, but partook in some of the festival and also managed to go to a Fabulous museum – the Manchester Art Gallery. Cool exhibits, like this one by a Vietnamese artist, great education spaces and a gorgeous interior design put it in the running for one of my favorite galleries.

Holdin' Out For a Hero (or two)

Speaking of favorites, along with "Buffy," one of my other favorite shows is "Heroes," and two of its cast members were also at the convention! Jimmy Jean-Louis (aka The Haitian) and Noah Gray-Cabey (aka Micah) manned the autograph and photo stands and did a Q&A double-act on Sunday. Noah was cute, if perhaps a bit too rehearsed/practiced in his answers. Came off a bit too precocious/mature for a tween-ager, but we found out he's was a music prodigy at 2 years old, so that might explain it. He was cast on the show after agents spotted him doing the talk show circuit about his super-powered piano playing!

Jimmy came to the show after modeling stints and some time playing professional football (soccer). He is, in a word, GORGEOUS! He is also very charming and gregarious and quite the showman. At the close of the Q&A the emcee asked to wrap things up with "Glad Hands." Well, at first I thought this was some kind of weird Manchester-speak for "applause," but it turns out it stood for "jazz hands" or "spirit fingers," as Jimmy led Noah in a soft-shoe routine off off the stage. Those Heroes sure are multi-talented!

Hey Jude!

People always ask if I spot celebrities out and about in London, and up until last spring I hadn’t (stalking the stage door does not count). But on a pretty April day I saw Jude Law walking through Regent’s Park with his kids. Sigh.... Ok, so fast-forward nearly a year, with nary another ‘random’ celeb sighting to be had, I’m riding the bus home and look out the window and who’s walking by? Jude Law! Again! Still as gorgeous and golden as ever, walking over Waterloo Bridge in a great leather coat he caused quite the commotion on the #341 I can tell you! Was a ripple effect down the bus as folks looked out and spotted the luscious Law. Hey Jude indeed!

Go 'Speed' Racer!

On Monday night I saw “Speed-the-Plow” at the Old Vic. OMG, is “speed” the key word! Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum go about a mile a minute in the story of Hollywood film producers. Spacey, especially, is literally a human dynamo and gives one of the best performances I’ve seen on stage. Talk about being born to play a role, he IS Charlie Fox.. And as always, he is so gracious at the stage door, standing patiently to do autographs and photos.

Alas, the same cannot be said for Mr. Goldblum. He bailed on the autograph line after only about 5 people. I was bummed as I had been looking forward to letting him know I’d been a fan of his all the way back from Tenspeed and Brownshoe (anyone else remember this show?) to Speed-the-Plow. He is fantastic in the show, however, and Laura Michelle Kelly (aka The Beggar Woman from Sweeney Todd film) does the best she can in the underwritten, underdeveloped role of the secretary. The final act with Spacey and Goldblum’s clash of the titans is worth the price of admission alone! If you can, Go!

We Are the Champions

Our Pub Quiz team returned to victory this week! A team of just 4 of us cleaned the clocks of many larger teams of 8-10 players, and we each won 15 pounds! I kind of knew it might be in the bag when the first round was a photo id round that was “Name the 2008 Oscar Nominees!” Needless to say we got 20 out of 20.

Speaking of the Oscars, I caught up with three Oscar-nominated films last weekend. I found “Enchanted” quite, well, enchanting. Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey were very sweet and I found that those Oscar-nominated songs did indeed work a lot better within the context of the film. My only complaint/question is why they didn’t have Broadway stars Idina Menzel (Dempsey’s fiancé) and Tonya Pinkis (Dempsey’s client) sing any songs?! Also thought NYC looked beautiful in the film!

Speaking of NYC, we stayed with the Big Apple later that evening as we went to “American Gangster”. Ok, hello, what in the World was that Oscar nomination for Ruby Dee about? I think it must have been one of those “oh, she’s getting up there in age and we haven’t awarded her before, so we better get one in” nominations. She’s Barely in the film and when she is, well, I didn’t think she brought the roof down exactly. However, I thought Denzel was amazing! Then again, “who doesn’t like Denzel?” I think I prefer him when he’s playing bad characters like this one. Overall, I liked the film, didn’t love it. Thought Russell Crowe’s character was under-developed and the movie dragged on a bit.

Speaking of dragging, drag your butt to the cinema to see “The Diving Bell and The Butterfly!” A beautiful, moving biopic of the French editor of Elle, Jean-Dominique Bauby. I Loved this film. Thought the direction and performances were amazing! The film screened at my former employer Tricycle Theatre and we had a great Q&A after with the screenwriter Ronald Harwood (also of The Dresser and The Pianist fame). He explained that many of the nurses/therapists in the movie were the real ones who’d worked with Bauby. He also described how Johnny Depp was first considered for the leading role, but bowed out for other roles. Not sure I could have seen him in this, and thought Mathiew Almaric was fantastique! He’ll next be seen as the villain in the new James Bond film. That would be the film with possibly the lamest title ever, “The Quantum of Solace.”

The Worst Play in London

From the lamest title to the Lamest show I have possibly ever seen, I'm channeling my inner Mrs. Lovett, but am singing about plays and not pies. “The Viewing Room” is a play that was done a while back at Steppenwolf in Chicago and is about a couple in the near-future who volunteer to guard a prisoner in their home. I myself felt like a prisoner in the theatre and just wonder how in the world this thing every got produced!

We got free tickets through Tricycle and well let’s just say that that was the Best thing about it, that it was Free. Well, that and seeing Leonard Roberts, of “Buffy” and “Heroes” fame live and in the flesh. He was very easy on the eyes and actually not so bad in the role of the prisoner.

But the Rest of it?! Ok, first of all, the actor & actress playing the couple had the Worst American Accents heard on either side of the pond! On top of that, the actor just got more and more 'camp' as the play went on. The writing, particularly in the 2nd act, was just so hackneyed and cliched that the friends I went with kept bursting into unintended laughter. As far as the story, there wasn't a really huge twist. The first act ended with the couple finding out that they'd been sent the wrong prisoner. Instead of guarding a drug dealer they'd been sent a first-degree murderer who they had to then 'terminate,' so the 2nd act I guess was meant to be a treatise on the death penalty but was let down by, well, just about everything in the production, including a bizarre scene where the woman does yoga and then they all dance around to jazz music. WTF? Perhaps the worst thing I've seen in London, though the 2nd act became one of those it was soo bad it was slightly entertaining.

It Had To Be Poo

On the topic of crappy theatre (pardon my French), I realised that I have not shared the “poo bag” story yet. As the RSC no longer has a permanent home in London, it borrowed the Tricycle Theatre recently. The play was “I’ll Be the Devil,” a story of 18th century Ireland very “loosely” based on The Tempest. We were invited to the dress rehearsal with an email that also warned us that the play had scenes of very violent nature and adult content. Our friends in the tech office who had seen it then elaborated that these scenes included English soldiers shoving a crucifix up the bum of an Irish Catholic and then smearing him with feces. So, you know, the feel good hit of the season here at Easter time!

We trundle up to the theatre for the dress and a few of us take seats near the top (and near the door) so we can make a hasty exit if needed. Those plans were then shattered when the play’s director and designer decided to sit right in front of us. So then this older, very large, very drama queen type actor comes on to the stage and yells for the director “Roger? Roger darling? Are you around? Might I have a word?” So Roger walks over to the balcony and the actor calls up: “Am I to understand we are not going to have a poo bag in the dress?” (this being the item used to smear aforementioned feces). Well, turns out that the RSC can’t shell out for two costume shirts, and they needed the clean one for that night’s opening performance, so, no, no poo bag for you.

The actor then goes into quite the strop “What?! No poo bag! This is ridiculous! What are we going to do on matinee days? (just water apparently). This is the RSC? This is shoddy! Quite shoddy! No poo bag!” He repeats all this for about 2 more minutes and then storms off the stage. In the meantime we’ve all been trying to contain our laughter (and try not to pee from the hysterics..lol). The director returns up to his seat, kind of smiles at us and says “Well, something is shoddy and it’s more his attitude.” Ha!

The play itself? Well, it was not nearly as gruesome and violent as warned (that crucifix scene being the bulk of it). The bigger complaint was that it was just, well pretty darn dull. One of our colleagues who didn’t come to the dress but saw it that night came in later and said “Instead of warning me about how violent it was, you should have warned me how blooding boring it was instead!”

Not boring? My upcoming weekend traveling out of London. I’m journeying up north to Manchester (never been!) to go to Collectormania. Yes, I will be getting my geek on this weekend..lol. My friend Sarah and I are hopping on a bus at 8am tomorrow and heading up to stalk Anthony Stewart Head from "Buffy," not to mention a number of “Heroes” cast members! Woo hoo! Have never been to one of these sci-fi convention things before, so I am sure there will be good blog fodder (and pics) next week! Next week also brings a trip to Old Vic on Tuesday to see “Speed the Plow.” Jeff Goldlbum will be mine, oh yes..he will be mine..lol