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Not quite a cultural day as planned - I caught earlier trains there and back so I was in London for 10.30, but in need of coffee. Not having found any Cafe Nerds in the Bankside vicinity (but two Starbucks) I failed to complete my loyalty card but did mark a third dissertation after two on the train (am slow at these).
Thence to Rodchenko & Popova, two Russian artists from the dawn of the Soviet age, who engaged in non-objective painting, sculpture and I guess typography. Lots of triangles and lines painted onto canvas - the sort of thing that makes you feel you could do this. Not exactly disappointing - worth the fiver it cost me avec Art Fund card - but I didn't feel I needed the catalogue.
Then, delayed by a 99, I have an hour to walk to Haymarket, and buy lunch. I had ten minutes to spare, and the Upper Circle feels vertiginous when you are winded from a fast walk. On the other hand, I suspect there was no Tube route that would have been that quicker.
I don't think I've seen Waiting for Godot since a school production, in the round, so it was interesting to see how a major production would handle it. The set looked like a bombed out tenement, all grays and shadows, concrete and a lone tree, on a rake. Didi (Stewart) and Gogo (McKellen) are the two bowler hatted tramps, not quite as Laurel and Hardy as they could be, and not quite as music hall in the patter - Didi is more performative, especially on his own, and in the second half. The post curtain call exit owes something to Underneath the Arches routines.
Didi is the more cheerful of the two, the one who risks being brought down; Gogo, on the other hand, is Northern grim, looking on the dark side, seeing the cloud to every silver lining. He's also got less of the gift of the gab, relying on repetition in the tennis match of dialogue. It's a dependent relationship, one can't live without the other, as they wait together for the unseen Godot. Always it's tempting to read for metaphor - the living each day as if it's the last, the risk of dying in a state of sin (why else the speculation on the fate of the crucified thief mentioned by two of the evangelists?). And yet - Pozzo (Simon Callow, perfectly cast) and Lucky (Ronald Pickup - you'd know his face if you've seen any Dickens, or any ongoing British crime series) cut across this. Another dependent relationship - the master who cannot live without his slave, though the slave has no agency but to kick. If Waiting for Godot is a play where nothing happens twice, and The Tempest where nothing happens once, then Lucky is Caliban. He knows how to curse - or at least to kick and stamp - and gets the longest speech in the play. It's a thankless part, but he did get a round of applause so maybe not. Are they an older version of Didi and Gogo?
If the play were pure fantasy we wouldn't seek for subtext.
Rewatching, it's striking how far Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead lifts conceits and techniques, although it's tempered by the Hamlet intertext. Still, Hamlet feels like a ghost behind this play, in conversations about graves, in looking at clouds, in passing the time.
Then, after a slow exit (so many stairs), a march back to Charing Cross to catch the earlier of the two trains I'd scoped out, rather than going to the National to do the Picasso prints, or to the Haymarket Cafe Nerd. In fact, the previous train is still there, and I sneak on it, although without more than an apple and the dregs of water. I mark the remaining dissertation I have with me.
At Tesco (and here you need to insert the four letter f word, the six letter f word, at least two different four letter c words and a side order of seven letter c words, not to mention the b word (six, seven, and indeed nine) and even, I'm afraid, the twelve letter s word) to buy tea - and there are no tills. I am forced to use the self-scan; the first item won't. Five minutes later help arrives. Then I keep getting into a loop where it keeps asking for a Club Card - it cannot compute that the credit card is the clubcard but I want to pay with a debit card (and I wanted cash back). Fifteen sodding minutes. Leaving aside the queuing.
Thence to pub, and too many pints.
Thence to Rodchenko & Popova, two Russian artists from the dawn of the Soviet age, who engaged in non-objective painting, sculpture and I guess typography. Lots of triangles and lines painted onto canvas - the sort of thing that makes you feel you could do this. Not exactly disappointing - worth the fiver it cost me avec Art Fund card - but I didn't feel I needed the catalogue.
Then, delayed by a 99, I have an hour to walk to Haymarket, and buy lunch. I had ten minutes to spare, and the Upper Circle feels vertiginous when you are winded from a fast walk. On the other hand, I suspect there was no Tube route that would have been that quicker.
I don't think I've seen Waiting for Godot since a school production, in the round, so it was interesting to see how a major production would handle it. The set looked like a bombed out tenement, all grays and shadows, concrete and a lone tree, on a rake. Didi (Stewart) and Gogo (McKellen) are the two bowler hatted tramps, not quite as Laurel and Hardy as they could be, and not quite as music hall in the patter - Didi is more performative, especially on his own, and in the second half. The post curtain call exit owes something to Underneath the Arches routines.
Didi is the more cheerful of the two, the one who risks being brought down; Gogo, on the other hand, is Northern grim, looking on the dark side, seeing the cloud to every silver lining. He's also got less of the gift of the gab, relying on repetition in the tennis match of dialogue. It's a dependent relationship, one can't live without the other, as they wait together for the unseen Godot. Always it's tempting to read for metaphor - the living each day as if it's the last, the risk of dying in a state of sin (why else the speculation on the fate of the crucified thief mentioned by two of the evangelists?). And yet - Pozzo (Simon Callow, perfectly cast) and Lucky (Ronald Pickup - you'd know his face if you've seen any Dickens, or any ongoing British crime series) cut across this. Another dependent relationship - the master who cannot live without his slave, though the slave has no agency but to kick. If Waiting for Godot is a play where nothing happens twice, and The Tempest where nothing happens once, then Lucky is Caliban. He knows how to curse - or at least to kick and stamp - and gets the longest speech in the play. It's a thankless part, but he did get a round of applause so maybe not. Are they an older version of Didi and Gogo?
If the play were pure fantasy we wouldn't seek for subtext.
Rewatching, it's striking how far Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead lifts conceits and techniques, although it's tempered by the Hamlet intertext. Still, Hamlet feels like a ghost behind this play, in conversations about graves, in looking at clouds, in passing the time.
Then, after a slow exit (so many stairs), a march back to Charing Cross to catch the earlier of the two trains I'd scoped out, rather than going to the National to do the Picasso prints, or to the Haymarket Cafe Nerd. In fact, the previous train is still there, and I sneak on it, although without more than an apple and the dregs of water. I mark the remaining dissertation I have with me.
At Tesco (and here you need to insert the four letter f word, the six letter f word, at least two different four letter c words and a side order of seven letter c words, not to mention the b word (six, seven, and indeed nine) and even, I'm afraid, the twelve letter s word) to buy tea - and there are no tills. I am forced to use the self-scan; the first item won't. Five minutes later help arrives. Then I keep getting into a loop where it keeps asking for a Club Card - it cannot compute that the credit card is the clubcard but I want to pay with a debit card (and I wanted cash back). Fifteen sodding minutes. Leaving aside the queuing.
Thence to pub, and too many pints.
