March/May/Mom/(Theatre)Madness

Just like baseball fans flocking to Costner’s Field of Dreams, If there’s theatre – mom and I will go. Was just fantastic to have her over in March for my birthday week and in May for my gallbladder recuperation week. In March we caught the very moving and creative “Chronicles of Long Kesh” at my old employer, the Tricycle Theatre. Blending Motown hits with the protests and hunger strikes that took place in Long Kesh (now the Maze) prison in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, this show left mom and I breathless, amazed at how much just six actors and a basically bare set accomplished. Have a peak at their promo film for the show here. Mom also went with my friends Fiona and Nick to see the incredible Ian McKellen in Waiting for Godot. And of course we then played ‘Waiting for Sir Ian”, who was lovely and gracious at the stage door, after strutting and fretting his amazing couple hours on the stage and leaving the audience in tears. He told Mom he'd just been to Washington (small world)

Speaking of strutting and fretting, we also went with Stu and Sarah to an ‘interactive’ Henry V at the Southwark Playhouse – a cool venue located under London Bridge station. When we went in, the ushers gave us blue tickets that told us we’d be seated with the ‘French’ and that we had to help them in their cause. While the show was done on a big game board of a stage, it was far less interactive than we thought (we only stood up once as members of the French court), but they do get props for well, imaginative use of props actually..lol and some clever staging.

The biggest props, however, have to go to War Horse, which we saw in May. WOW! Go see this (and bring some Kleenex). Beautiful, stunning, so imaginative! Move over Lion King – the puppetry in this is Incredible. Five minutes in and you think you are looking at real horses. Spielberg is apparently turning it into a movie, and if he uses real horses, well..the man is dead to me! It ranks up there as one of my top 5 all-time theatre moments. I hear it’s heading to Broadway – book those tickets now. Here’s the trailer

Another show for which I had a trailer to share was the all-male production of Pirates of Penzance at Wilton’s Music Hall. This show has been near and dear to my heart since our Herndon High’s production of it back in the 1980s and the greatl film version w/Kevin Kline and Angela Lansbury. Was having dinner w/friends Barry and Rebecca and he mentioned seeing it and how it was so good he’d see it again, so off we all went. What a fun, joyous production in the perfect location at the world’s oldest grand music hall. Here’s a pretty much spot-on review

Speaking of reviews, not sure what the London critics were on when they heaped praises on Enron. I saw it last month and can completely understand why it closed so quickly on Broadway. Self-conscious staging and acting, set pieces too clever for their own good, over-the-top Texas accents – in a word: Annoying! I’ve loved earlier work by the director Rupert Goold, but this was just too, well, much. Phew, and I’ve probably gone on too much here, so will wrap up this post now!

E.T. = the extra talented and talkative Emma Thompson

When I’ve gone to celebrity book signings in the past (Rupert Everett, Bill Clinton, etc) standard procedure is you put the name for the dedication on a post-it and that’s all they sign. ‘To Gretchen- Lots of Love, Bill’ (well, ok, maybe not love, but you know what I mean). Not so for the funny and friendly academy-award winner Emma Thompson! She was signing copies of the new Nanny McPhee book at Waterstone’s Piccadilly (aka the BEST book store EVER! – friendliest, most helpful staff, comfy chairs, great views, but I digress) and sure enough the staff passed out the post-its for names. However, when we got closer in the queue, I could hear her chatting with people, ‘What would you like me to write? Is it a special occasion?’ etc. So when I went up to the table, I told her one of my copies was for Lucy (Stu’s niece) who was having a birthday, so she wrote Happy Birthday, and then I said another was for my nephew Destin, whose birthday wasn’t until November. ‘And how old will Destin be?’ I told her and she wrote “To Destin, who I hear is 6 and Gorgeous!’ (which of course he is – see photos in post below...lol). She then asked if I was on holiday here and I said no that I was now living in London and she said ‘Oh, I do apologise for the weather!’ I then thanked her for taking time to sign my 3 allowed copies and she replied “No, Thank YOU for buying 3 of my books.” I LOVE Emma! More pics of her here

Christmas Catch-up

Mother Nature really messed with my trip home at Xmas last year. I arrived at Dulles wearing a long wool coat (clueless as to the forecast ahead - it was just too big to pack) and the passport control officer looked at me and said ‘You’re well prepared for this weekend.’ Me: ‘Oh, is it going to be cold?’ Him: “Well we’re expecting about 3 feet of snow tomorrow (looking at passport), but I see you’re from Massachusetts, so you’ll be used to it.” It = snowpalooza, snowpocalypse, etc and led to lots of snow cancellations for visits and a 3-hour work out for the Pierce girls to dig out Kait's car! However, was still able to see many of you, including a lovely dinner at David and John’s (the night of the blizzard – many thanks again to Joan and Brent for getting me safely to Kaitlin’s!), a great Freddie Mac reunion lunch (pictured), a sleepover at Tania and Ned’s with the girls, and a final dinner in Shirlington. Then had a wonderful and White Christmas at mom and Peter’s with the whole family, including budding new football (aka soccer) star Destin, sporting his new Arsenal kit, courtesy of Aunt Gretchen, who will buying another kit this year as on March 29 we welcomed Eddie to the family! Big brother Destin clearly relishing his role in the pic here.