One of the things I love about this city is that eventually everyone you’d ever want to see visits here. I’ve just seen Patrick Stewart in Macbeth, Ian McKellen will soon be playing here in King Lear and this evening I saw Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Pryce!
So – G number one was Neil Gaiman in conversation with Claire Armitstead from the Guardian, at the Criterion Theatre in Picadilly, It was an interview, but really he needed so little prompting, she just sort of nudged him in appropriate directions
I was running very late too. I just made it to the theatre for 1800, which is when it was supposed to start, but like all good theatrical events, it was running five minutes late so it was all good.
Neil is in town for the UK opening and promotion of ‘Stardust’ the movie, which I will in due course see, but he talked of many other things as well. It was an hour’s dialogue – and the crowd were allowed to ask questions at the end too. It was fascinating. He’s a lot nicer and gentler in person than you are led to believe from his writing and he said some very interesting things. Like he writes something to discover what he thinks about a subject rather than to illuminate others, and that he isn’t concerned with offending people when writing; in person he’s squeamish and polite, but the minute he’s in a story he looses his inhibitions and just writes what the story asks of him. He also said that if he ever tried to write something for money it invariably went wrong, but if he wrote what interested or intrigued him, the money just sort of worked itself out.
Richard kept my company at this event, and as we were both due at the Apollo to see a play at 1945, he was understandably concerned that we make that performance in time. However as the Gaiman interview was over by 1900 we had about ¾ of an hour up our sleeves and so decided to go to have a look in a Neil’s book signing down the road to see how long the line was. The signing was happening at the Piccadilly Waterstones (the biggest bookstore in Europe) and when we got there we were told to wait for about 2 minutes and then were ushered into a separate room. I really don’t know how we managed it but R and I ended up first in line for the signing. So of course we waited. And waited. Until Neil finally came in at about 1925. I got some photos and two books signed and Richard got his copy of Good Omens signed, which he’d been carrying around the world with him in hope of such an opportunity as he’d already managed to get it signed by Terry Pratchett it’s other author. So it was a bit of a mad dash for us, over to the Blue Posts to pick up the tickets from Jase and then to make it to the theatre on time, but we did.
So, the second G was seeing Jonathan Pryce in ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ at the Apollo. It was an absorbing play. The dialogue was electric and the actor’s were superb… only, I was a little lost as to what the whole thing was about, until interval, when Jason was able to illuminate me. The film apparently makes it a lot clearer, but essentially the main plot of the play is a competition: 1st prize is a Cadillac, 2nd Prize is you keep your job, and 3rd Prize is you’re fired! So, it’s four door-to-door salesmen in the US competing to sell real estate, and if they don’t get any sales up on the board they lose their jobs.
I found it compelling, but just as I was a little lost at the beginning, so I was a tad under-whelmed at the end. The twist really wasn’t one for me, and although the dynamic between the actors was good, a couple of them kept loosing their American accents, which I found quite jarring. Add that to that the fact that I wasn’t feeling so great and the end result was that I enjoyed it but wasn’t fired by it – no pun intended.
So the third G? It was goodbye to Martin tonight. He’s off home tomorrow and so we had a last beer at the Belgium bar De Hems (I had strawberry beer this time – can’t wait to go to Belgium!) and an Adelaidean contingent photo and then I had to retire.
Sad to see him go but he will be back for Christmas… won’t you Marty??!!
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