David: Fourth Day in London

Well, that's the first time that's happened, I think: the play wasn't even 60 seconds under way, and already I was in tears. The play is "War Horse," it's an adaptation of a book for children by Michael Morpurgo, and the National Theatre production is staged with actors, projections of drawings and etchings on a screen for backgrounds, and for the full-size horses, some flying birds and a goose, and extra humans . . . puppets.

We just got back from our final play of the trip, and yes, we were short of time and tired last night, so we did not file a report after "Troilus and Cressida." I can see now that there is far too much to report about the basic touristy things Carole and I have done the past week -- never mind the more general observations I would like to record about London, British culture (well, signage and food, mainly), and our hotel -- so I will probably write more on the latter subjects here after we get home to Oregon and have had some time to recover.

Anyway. Wednesday (yesterday) the tour organizers had arranged to have a political columnist -- Polly Toynbee, of the Independent, I believe -- come in and chat with the American visitors at our hotel in the morning. But Carole and I decided to skip that, given the little free time we had to explore London. So we took the Tube to the edge of Hyde Park and walked through it as far as the Princess Diana memorial, which is actually quite nice (neither of us could give a fig for the woman, but I'm fascinated with what other people made of her); took the Tube again to stroll by Buckingham Palace; then subway'd under the Thames to the south side to meet some old friends for lunch.

Ken and Sherry moved here from Seattle 11 years ago when she landed a theater management training program, and he found work in software programming. Their kids have thus been growing up British, and they recently acquired local citizenship. We had a lovely meal with them, and then Sherry showed us around backstage at The Young Vic, where she works now. (The Old Vic, just up the street, is currently staging "Inherit the Wind" starring Kevin Spacey, who has been living and working in British theater for a number of recent years.)

Carole and I then took the Tube over to a station (wish I could recall the name) that turned out to exit right from under Big Ben, which in retrospect sort of makes all the barricades and bollards around it at street level seem a little pointless. We walked around the Parliament and Westminster Cathedral, past a copy of Saint-Gaudens statue of Lincoln, past Downing Street and the Horse Guards (taking lots of photos of all the above items along the way, of course). Then we split up and she looked at paintings in the National Gallery and I tried to get to the Dickens House and the British Museum, but it was too late in the day to make entry either allowed or useful. But I had a nice pleasant walk through Russell Square, and sat and read in Bedford Square before returning to the hotel and showering and dressing for the evening's show.

That was "Troilus and Cressida," staged at what is officially known as "Shakespeare's Globe" (although it isn't really on the site where Shakespeare's Globe stood in the early 17th century, and it was really the brainchild and dream of an American named Sam Wanamaker, etc.). But never mind, it really is beautiful and moving. T&C is not often performed, being a very cynical and puzzling "problem play" that has no heroes, in which nearly every character acts hypocritically and cravenly. The company gave it a stirring performance, with live music (much drums, an occasional wood flute or trumpets, and tuned bells), reasonably period (Trojan War) costumes, some terrific fight choreography, and plenty of cheap laughs for the audience. I thought it was solid but not that great, mostly because it is a strangely-written and plotted show.

This morning we were bused to the Geffrye Museum, which depicts a history of interior design from the 16th century or so to the present. There are both rooms fully decorated in the styles of various eras, mostly with period furniture, fixtures, carpeting, etc., and a series of gardens also designed in a chronological order. We lunched in Covent Garden market, where Carole and I stumbled on a cart superintended by a woman whose vibrantly colored silk vests and neckties Carole had actually happened across on the Web some months ago. "In the flesh," her work was irresistable, and I ended up purchasing two vests the likes of which I have never seen stateside. Not only did many of our elder companions on the tour comment warmly on the one I chose to wear to dinner and the theater, but during the intermission I saw a teenaged British girl mouth "wow" to herself as I passed. Gave me a great feeling.

In the mid afternoon our tour took us to the Royal Theatre Drury Lane, about whose history and various things I noted, I could write many paragraphs. So I'll just say here that it was originally built in the early 1660s, burned down once or twice, was rebuilt and managed by the politician and playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the current structure dates from about 1812, with two separate royal boxes for a king and prince who had gotten into a fist fight in the lobby early on. A pair of actors -- a man and a woman -- took turns leading us 'round in the guise of characters from the theater (such as a master carpenter) or actual history (Nell Gwynne, an actress who grew up in a pub and brothel to become mistress of King Charles II). They were very entertaining.

I have lots of little things I noted down from tours or museums, or observed on our goings about London, but I'll save them for another time. For now, I just wanted to share that I glimpsed a shop called "Planet of the Grapes -- wines and spirits"; and our tour guide offered an excellent definition of snobbery: "bad manners masquerading as good taste." (He added that only the middle class tends toward snobbery, because the working classes have nothing to protect and the upper classes have nothing to fear.)

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS: Black and white bread is indeed sausage that has been mixed with grains or bread, although the "black" gets its coloration from pork blood. No wonder I didn't much care for it. One other odd item for breakfast is fried bread, which is nothing like French toast, but white bread heavily soaked in oil and/or deep fried until its a crusty golden brown. You can get it as is or under a fried egg. I saw a lot of the locals with various meats piled high on their breakfast plates, and so even though I meant to say the other day that an estimated 75 percent of the diet of the king and aristocracy may have been meat in Henry VIII's day, some folks aren't that far behind today.

On the way to the New London Theatre for "War Horse" this evening, our theater expert Giles remarked: "The puppetry is stunning. Normally I try to avoid value judgments like 'you should,' because you might not agree, but if you don't like these puppets, you're weird!"

I had to agree. Even before they changed a foal into a full-grown horse, long before a pair of cavalry horses were captured by the Boche and made to draw a wagon of wounded and then an artillery gun, and even before we got to see the foal -- which is to say, less than 60 seconds after the play began -- the simple beauty of a couple of bird puppets (swallows?) brought tears to my eyes. The story concerns a young boy and a horse, torn apart by the First World War when the latter is requisitioned (actually, sold by his greedy father to the officer corps) to serve at the Front. And the boy decides to lie about his age and enlist in order to find and reclaim his horse. In the course of the story, Joey the horse is captured by the Germans and cared for by a former cavalry officer who hates the war and wants to go home himself, and eventually finds himself in a no-man's-land of exploding shells and barbed wire. Three puppeteers handled the large and small movements of the two principal horses in the story, and lesser horse figures swept through on the shoulders of single operators.

I cried many more times, for many different reasons, through the rest of the evening. The audience, considerably made up of schoolchildren in uniforms and teenagers, loved it as much as we did. It was an intense and deeply moving story, and the program explained a lot about the war, animals in it, and the wonderful design of this production.