Wednesday, May 03, 2006

topher and the woolf

I keep thinking I'm going to figure my little neighborhood out. I know the three main roads, Gloucester, Cromwell and High Street Kensington, but there are a bunch of little spaghetti roads intersecting them. They all look windy, cobbled and leafy so I'm always darting down them, hoping to discover that sneaky little path that cuts my journey to the classrooms in half. It's yet to happen successfully. Whoever designed London did so on opium, and now we all pay the price! Well, mostly people like me, who try to cut journeys in half all the time, pay the price. One slight diversion can lead you almost anywhere; and the majority of the roads, lanes, and mews disappear or stop abruptly. It's like living in the Winchester rifle house. I've got to learn to be happy with the three roads I know. They stretch, they intersect, they do their job.

But there are such things as happy accidents. While trying to cut corners with my Yankee can-do spirit, I wandered down a little lane that led to the back wall of a garden. And just to my left was Virginia Woolf's house. Now I don't know all that much about Virginia Woolf; I've read A Room of One's Own and Mrs. Dalloway, and I saw the Nicole Kidman movie with the big nose and everything, but I don't know much else. All the same, there was something intriguing about stumbling across Virginia Woolf's house, and realizing that she was a little more ritzy than she let on.

And then, in some kind of serendipitous twist, we happened to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Apollo Theatre tonight. It starred a few people of note. Kathleen Turner, who used to be really sexy and is now a little portly and mostly a man, played Martha. Bill Irwin, who is the old Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street- not the clowny new one, played George. (PS. It was hard to see Mr. Noodle not do any special tricks. You know, like going down fake stairs, etc. I kept waiting for a grand piano to fall on him. Comedy!) David Harbour, who is the spitting image of my friend Aaron Gaines, played Nick. Mireille Enos, who I went to BYU with and who taught me how to fake smoke for The Glass Menagerie, played Honey. She was my favorite part, but maybe that's because I know her.

Actually, the best part of the play was eating those little ice-cream cups at intermission. Mark Pugh bought me one. The best twelve dollars he ever spent!

I got home late from the theatre, so I just took Gloucester road home. No use pretending like I was going to find an alternate path. I'd probably just run into Jack the Ripper's house, anyway. And with my luck, he'd still be alive. Just kidding! He's been dead for years, and I'm not a bankside prostitute.

PS. On the tube going to the play tonight, we saw an 8 foot Grandmother. You can see her in the pic! Wow. So tall.