Thursday

You know that feeling when your body is deciding whether or not to succumb to a cold? That's what I've got today, which is why I'd huddled in my hotel room, drinking lots of water and sleeping when I can.

Yesterday, I spent seven hours in the Young Vic, a wonderful theater, watching the two parts of "The Inheritance", a play by American playwright Matthew Gomez, about the experience of gay men in the 21st century, structured around E. M. Forster's novel "Howard's End". The first half was dazzlling -- a magnificiently coordinated chorus of excellent young actors on a nearly bare stage that was mesmerizing for three and a half hours. Joyce and I spent our supper telling each other how great it was and anticipating the second part. Then the second part was talky, a little unbelievable, and kind of clunky. You know a play is not doing well when Vanessa Redgrave (no, really!) comes onstage to play a grandmotherly figure caring for a magical house, and you wish her speeches were shorter.

So I'm tired and snurfly and trying to rest up so I can enjoy the play this evening.

One note I need to enter: we find ourselves surrounded by handsome, attentive, solicitous young men, many with French accents, who comprise the wait staff at most of the restaurants we've patronized. I suspect it is a side effect of Britain's fading connection to the European Union. Another handsome, etc., young man, a Croatian this time, pedaled Joyce and me home on his pedicab from the theater where we saw the Olivier Award winner for best play, "The Ferryman". Magnificent in some ways (I'm talking about the play now, not the handsome Croatian), a bit clunky in plot structure. A couple dozen characters, all speaking in Irish brogue that left me struggling to understand the dialogue at times. There was lots of livestock on stage, including a live rabbit, a live goose, and a live baby, all of whom turned in convincing performances. It was set during The Troubles, the conflict between Catholics and Protestants that is again hanging over the Emerald Isle as the Brexit negotiations stumble against the  question of Irish borders.

And every play we've seen so far has featured actual flames -- Monday night, we were at a theater lit entirely by candles; Tuesday night, a lampshade caught fire (deliberately -- it was in the script); and last night, a crucial document was burned to keep an intended heir from getting a property. It sure focuses the audience's attention.