The road less travelled...

So it is, as Rene says, only Tuesday. I'm heading off to Bristol today to meet a friend so not so much touristy as friend-y stuff today.

I forgot a few things about yesterday that I wanted to share. I have decided that my typical tourist purchases that say 'I was here' is going to be bookmarks, which are practical and easy to get home. So far my collection contains a red leather bookmark from Westminster Abbey and three wooden bookmarks containing images of the door of Number 10, the red double-decker bus and the Houses of Parliament. I didn't get one at the War Cabinet Rooms, but never mind.

I have also bought several books:
Churchill by Celia Sandys (signed by the author)
Collected Grimm Tales by Carol Ann Duffy and Tim Supple
Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945 by Nicholas Rankin (signed)
Speech Genres and Other Late Essays by M.M. Bakhtin
Churchill's Bodyguard by Tom Hickman
So that is a suitably varied collection. Stuff for interest reading and also for my thesis, so I can feel justifiably proud of that.

I also bought a collection of DVDs. Virtual cookie for the first person to spot the theme:
State of Play starring David Morrisey and John Simm
The Catherine Tate Show series 1 and 2
Secret Smile
The Friday Night Project
Life on Mars series 1 and 2
So any ideas? *g*



Now for Avenue Q...

For those who don't know about the show, it's using Sesame Street-style puppets to tell the story of problems that affect young people in the 20s and 30s. The show is peppered with profanities and deals with issues like unemployment, sex and homosexuality. It's a very funny, rather thought-provoking and quite clever show.

That's the basic premise. I've seen the show twice in Melbourne and now once in London, and I have to say that I prefer the Aussie version. Not that there's anything much wrong with the London production, but it's been running for such a long time that it doesn't have the energy that the Melbourne production almost bursts with. Also, having got used to the full-scale production in Melbourne, where the characters interact with human-sized sets, I find the mini-rooms that have been made for the puppets rather odd. I know the sets are the same (or almost so) as the original Broadway show, but it just felt a bit peculiar.

The cast was overall very good, but I thought the standout performances came from Julie Atherton (Kate Monster and Lucy the Slut) and Mark Goldthorp (Nicky and Trekkie Monster). I enjoyed Christopher Fry's Brian, although he lacked some of the explosive energy I'd seen in David James who played the same role in Melbourne. I liked Daniel Boys, but he was much better as Rod than Princeton. When he was doing Princeton, my eye was constantly drawn to him, but when he was doing Rod, I always watched the puppet. I think it was because Rod seemed to emote more than Princeton did. I found that particularly obvious when he was acting opposite Atherton's Kate Monster.

I did feel sorry for Atherton, though, who did go through four shirts that were eventually soaked with sweat. (In his defense, he was on stage for almost the entire production and almost ran from one of the stage to the other.)

Apologies for those who think I'm belittling the London show. I'm not, but I just felt that the Melbourne show was better.

So that's it for now. More soon!