Week off!

[wildeabandon]

I've had the last week off work, which has been lovely. We didn't go away, but we did lots of 'touristy' things in London. Monday didn't go exactly as planned. It started well, with a delicious breakfast at Ottolenghi, but then we headed to the Southbank to see the Drag exhibition at the Hayward, only to discover that it didn't actually open until Wednesday. Oh well, we thought, let's go to the Somewhere In Between installation at the Wellcome, but it turns out that their exhibitions aren't open on Mondays. At that point we gave up and went home... That evening was an LGMC rehearsal, and it's feeling really good to be getting back into the swing of things again.

On Tuesday morning we went to the Sublime Symmetry exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery, showcasing the art of William DeMorgan, which was perhaps a little disappointing. There were some quite pretty pieces, but nothing that really grabbed me, and there was less of a mathematical underpinning that we were expecting. We then headed to the Southwark Playhouse to see Bring it On, a musical by (amongst others) Lin Manuel Miranda, very loosely based on the teen movie of the same name. This wasn't as brilliant as Hamilton, or even In The Heights, but it was still a very enjoyable show with some catchy tunes and fabulous dancing/cheer routines.

On Wednesday Ramesh had a lie in and I caught up on some admin, then we went for a short walk in order to build up an appetite for the evening, when robert_jones very kindly took us out to dinner at Le Gavroche. Thursday was another fairly quiet day, and then in the evening we went to see The Importance of Being Earnest at the Vaudeville. This was the final installation of the Wilde season which has been running all year, and probably the most disappointing. Cecily and Lady Bracknell were excellent, and Gwendolyn and all the smaller parts were done very well, but sadly the male leads were a bit weak. Probably because of a rather odd directorial choice, they were delivering all of their lines at breakneck pace, and not leaving any time for the audience to react. It's such an excellent play that it was still tremendous fun, but I've definitely seen it done better, and am quite tempted to organise a readthrough of it sometime soon and see what my marvellously talented friends can bring to it.

On Friday we made our second and successful attempt at the Drag exhibition, which was smaller than we were expecting, but also free, which we hadn't realised. There were a few really striking pieces - I particularly liked "His Majesty the Queen", by Luciano Castelli, but the exhibition as a whole didn't seem entirely coherent. It's definitely worth a look if you're in the area, but I wouldn't neccessarily recommend a special trip. On the other hand, the spare ribs I got for lunch from the nearby market were absolutely spectacular, so might be enough of a reason to go.

After a fairly hectic week we kept the weekend fairly free, and now I'm back at work, trying to wind up and make sure everything is ready to hand over when I finish in a couple of weeks.

Comments

[sfred]

A holiday in London sounds like a good thing.

I really enjoyed Bring It On (and yes, would rank it lower than Hamilton or In The Heights).

[juliet]

I thoroughly enjoyed Bring It On, enough that I went to see it a second time. (It is only just down the road from me.) I like the music & have listened to it on Spotify a few times but I think it's the cast that really made it for me (& got the whole thing to sail over the absurdities of the 'plot'). Just an awful lot of *fun*.