6-7-8 January - Cleaning up and moving on

The weather had really been quite nice during our stay. Most of the torrential rain and howling winds came at night and the daytime temperatures were in the 40s and 50s.  As I usually spend the last day or two of a house sit doing laundry and cleaning, it seemed perfect timing that the temperatures plummeted.  Of course, the drop in temperature meant that Bruce had to bundle up a bit for his pub crawls but, of course, he managed. Gandalf stayed close to me sensing, I think, that change was on the horizon.

Monday it was time for last minute cleaning and packing. Gandalf kept us guessing by disappearing outside and not coming when we called.  Our train back into London was just before two though, admittedly, it wouldn’t have been a disaster if we had to leave later.  At last he appeared, I fed him, we said our goodbyes (meows?) and started off for the train station.  We had to go the long way around because the path and the field were flooded.

Sensing that we were leaving Ashtead and not wanting us to miss anything, mother nature treated us to a bit of snow as we walked to the train station. 

We arrived in London at Victoria Station and got a cab to the Chelsea Cloisters, which has become our go-to lodging. We checked in, unpacked, spruced up a bit and headed for the Noel Coward Theatre to see “The Motive and the Cue.” First, though, we had dinner at Brown’s, a mediocre restaurant, but conveniently located next door to the theatre.

The Noel Coward theatre opened in 1903 as The New Theatre. In 1920, Noel Coward’s first staged play, “I’ll Leave It to You” opened, but ran for only 37 performances. In 1933, John Gielgud took over as theatre manager and throughout the decade starred in a number of productions. During WW2, the Old Vic was bombed and badly damaged and the company took possession of the New Theatre. (It was with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1930 that Gielgud starred in a much lauded Hamlet. Over the next few decades, the list of productions and actors appearing at the theatre reads like a who’s who of British theatre: Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, Judith Anderson, Robert Morley, Peter O’Toole, Roger Rees, Judi Dench – the list is virtually endless. Shows included much of the Shakespeare canon, The Cherry Orchard, Peer Gynt, The Rose Tattoo, Under Milkwood, Gigi, and Oliver. In 1973 the theatre was renamed the Albery theatre, in tribute to longtime manager Sir Bronson Albery.  After a major refurbishment in 2006, it reopened as The Noel Coward Theatre.

The Motive and the Cue recounts the story of John Gielgud’s direction of Richard Burton in Hamlet, the conflict between them during rehearsal, and Elizabeth Taylor’s role in trying to bring them together.  I don’t usually have trouble understanding British accents, but I found myself straining to understand the Welsh accent of Johnny Flynn as Richard Burton.  I also found it quite puzzling that the actress playing Elizabeth Taylor used a southern accent through much of the show. It took a while, but I managed to attune my ear to the Welsh, but I found the first act to be a bit long and thought it might have benefitted from some judicious editing. One thing I loved was the use of recordings of two Noel Coward recordings to introduce each act; "There's a Right Way and a Wrong Way" for act 1 and "Why Must the Show Go On?" for act 2. If the first act was a bit slow, the second act was on fire, with Flynn and Mark Gatiss, as John Gielgud, pulling the audience in during the scenes when the two actors revealed their histories and insecurities. Flynn’s interpretation of Burton’s delivery of the “To be or not to be” monologue was marvelous. Ultimately it was a truly satisfying evening of theatre.