Shortly, I shall complete 69 trips around the sun. I thought that I would organise a pre-birthday jaunt for myself.
I availed myself of Roland's good services for a ticket to the dress rehearsal of a new production at Covent Garden and I built the rest around that. In my mental preparation, I had thought of an art gallery in the afternoon and a theatre show in the evening: the sort of schedule I was used to a decade ago. In the event, I did neither and opted for relaxation in my hotel room followed by an evening meal and a stroll around Bloomsbury and Covent Garden.
Getting to London, I remain unimpressed with Aviva. The train service feels as though there is no inward investment and the owners are just waiting for the whole of the network to be brought back into public ownership.
I stayed at the Gresham Hotel on Bloomsbury Street. Only when I got to the location did I realise that I had stayed there before. This time, I was in the main building rather than the annexe. I had a non-ensuite room on the top (third) floor: no lift. There is coming a time when walking up three flights of stairs will be more than just laborious.
Evening meal was taken at the Pizza Express on Coptic Street - the one which was a dairy a long time ago. It was reasonable but the whole place is looking tired and in need of a refurbishment.
London, by evening, to the tourist on foot has changed. The latest, tourist-based, industrialised version of street food from South East Asia appears to be sticky buns with a variety of additions to choose from. The outlets all look very shiny so I guess it is all quite recent.
There are road works and construction sites everywhere. I guess this is part of a process of catch up after the pandemic which has been enhanced by the release of a skilled workforce following the completion of the Elizabeth Line.
There are many more cyclists. Also, most traffic appears to be electric powered. Consequently, the city centre is much quieter than I remembered it to be and the air does not taste so much of petrol and diesel. A further blessing is that the roads are much quieter of an evening.
Having slept the sleep of the tired and depleted, I broke my fast at The Black Penny on Great Queen Street and it was excellent. The venue has changed format since I met Leo here some time back. It is now given over to table service and has increased its prices. However, it felt like a value-for-money meal and a hearty start to the day.
In passing, I became taken with the notion that, had I partaken of an extra helping of mussels at the restaurant, would that have been a case of the moules the merrier? I'll leave it to you to decide.
And so to Covent Garden for an 11am start to the Dress Rehearsal for Wozzeck.
The theatre wasn't packed which wasn't a big surprise but it wasn't, as Roland had it, a potential reason to flee.
For a £15 ticket, I saw a workman-like production. I've seen better visual renditions of the work and I'd really hoped for better from Deborah Warner.
It was cool and detached which I've come to expect from her. But I've also come to expect a more rigorous approach to the internal logics of presentation.
Wozzeck is an impoverished soldier stationed in a back-water provincial town: he makes ends meet by earning extra money from the Captain by doing menial chores and from the Doctor by participating in quasi-medical experiments.
During the first scene Wozzeck shaves the Captain. There was some justification, therefore, for setting that first scene in the barracks' latrine/shower block. An updated (though not specific) time period gave us white tiles which (maybe) linked to the medical strand of the piece. To underline the low status of the environment, two of the toilet bowls were broken. Fine. I've no problem with broken toilet bowls but their presence was not echoed by signs of dilapidation or vandalism anywhere else in the production. It just felt incoherent.
Musically, the event was exemplary. The cast was excellent with Gerhaher particularly given an astonishing performance as the down-trodden and unbalanced central character. Anja Kampe was a very matter-of-fact Marie just doing her best to survive and care for her child. The triumvirate of menacing authority figures, the Captain, the Doctor and the Drum Major, were taken by Peter Hoare, Brindley Sherratt and Clay Hilley respectively: they were kept just outside of the boundaries of caricature.
The real bonus for me was to be present in the theatre to hear a world-class orchestra of the right size play the music live. Antonio Pappano encouraged a sound which was sensational with a depth and lushness I'd not encountered before. All sorts of bits of Mahler and Strauss popped out.
Overall it was good but without the shattering sense of grotesque horror which I've experienced on other occasions.
Then I went home.