Phonetics & Photographs

Show:                 The Birthday Party

Type:                  Play

Venue:                The Harold Pinter Theatre

Date:                  Tuesday 28^th March 2018 (Matinee)

Seen with:         Tout seule

Ticket:                £22

View:                  ‘Restricted view’ but not too bad – able to ignore the small column a few rows                   ahead and almost ignore the head of the tall man in front

Cast:                   Toby Jones, Zoe Wanamaker, Peter Wight, Stephen Mangan, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Pearl Mackie

Verdict:         In my very, very (veryveryvery) humble opinion, The Birthday Party is Theatre of the Absurd made accessible to a wider audience. Although audiences and critics didn’t seem to agree when it was first staged in London in 1958 – I’m pretty sure it closed after less than a week. I’ve also seen it described as Comedy of Menace, but I’m going to stick to absurd, for the simple fact that it is. It’s absurd. And yet it is accessible. It follows a familiar 3-act structure, the action takes place in a recognisable setting (a boarding house at the sea side), the characters appear functional and properly formed at first glance, and you feel for almost the entire first act that the play is going somewhere, that it’s going to resolve in the expected manner.
Putting on the Speech Pathologist hat for a moment, it almost reminds me of patients with fluent aphasia – they use a lot of words, but since they don’t use content words they don’t really say anything. The Birthday Party almost appears to be a functional and comprehensible story on the surface, but when you look closer you realise that everything in it – characters, plot, dialogue – is untethered and incomprehensible.
The show itself was fantastically acted, particularly Stephen Mangan, who was eerily charismatic and creepy at the same time, and Zoe Wanamaker, who was the addlepated Meg right down to every twitch of her fingertips. The staging was also just great – the lighting that so fluidly showed the passage of time through the day, the windows and doors and half-glimpsed rooms that allowed the ambient noise to filter through to the audience. Very much enjoyed!

Notes:                 Fun fact – The Birthday Party was originally staged at the Lyric Hammersmith, which is just up the road from me and *technically* my local theatre. Isn’t it a lovely sounding thing, to have a local theatre?

The play's the thing...and also the musical...and the opera, and the Ballet, and...you get the idea.

London is a playgoer’s delight, and I fully intend to make the most of it. To that end, ‘I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list…’

Plays

Musicals

Ballet

Opera

Other

Back again! Sorry to anyone who is reading this for updates on travel and life and has to deal with random angsty posts about health professional shenanigans along the way…but at least there were pictures of cute animals! Speaking of which, this post is going to be picture heavy, so I will try to keep the wittering on to a minimum.

For our second proper day in Paris, we had decided to head over to the Eiffel Tower first thing and walk our way back around, along the Seine, to Notre Dame and the city centre, before heading back to Montmatre.

Well, actually, first thing was heading back to Café de deux Moulins, because it was on our way and we thought the snow might have ruined our photos the day before. And then getting pastries for breakfast.

But after that, we headed to the Eiffel Tower first thing!

We were up pretty early (for us – we like warm beds and we can not lie…), and it was an absolutely gorgeous day. The sun was out, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. We were so chuffed with ourselves that we’d decided to do the Eiffel Tower on the lovely sunny day and not the snowy, cloudy day before.

Except that it was closed.

We could not believe it.

Even though the snow had stopped, the combination of sun and cold temperatures meant the only thing worse than snow: ice. 

La Tour c’était fermé.

Which, I have to say, is fair enough. We just about took our lives into our hands crossing the park to get to the darn thing in the first place, especially me in my non-sensible shoes.

So instead of going up the Tower, we went to the second most important place in Paris – the bridge from Inception! Which was lovely and very pretty and absolutely swarming with people taking photos.

Ugh. Tourists. Seriously?

So we waited our turn and then, in the 3 or 4 seconds when there were no people in shot, snapped a million photos.

We then crossed the river to Les Jardins du Trocadero to take yet more pictures, and walked along the (still flooded) Seine to arguably the third most important place in Paris – the Pont Alexandre III! Or, for the uneducated amongst you, the bridge from Anastasia!

Many more photos ensued (you were warned), and also a brief dubsmash of us singing ‘Someone Like You’ (which I don’t appear to have in my archives… Steph?!).

And then it was time for a pastry break.

For Steph.

Laduree was a very difficult experience, one that still don’t know that I’ve come to terms with. Beautiful macaroons, window displays to die for, everything so sweet and colourful and Parisian! And everything chock-full of almond meal…

Despite her promises and protestations that ‘they’re not even that good, anyway…’, the wound was deep.

Luckily for me, Angelina was right around the corner.

We found Angelina online while looking for the best hot chocolate in Paris. Which we searched for because it was winter and we’re not silly. Angelina is an amazing café behind the Jardin des Tuileries. Calling it a café seems wrong somehow; that makes me think of something small and quaint and Angelina is anything but. It’s enormous, two floors of pastries and coffee and hot chocolate.

And, oh, the hot chocolate.

You literally get a jug of melted chocolate and a pot of cream. And even if you don’t really like cream, like moi, you need it. Believe it or not, the cream actually cuts the sweetness of the chocolate. It’s that thick and rich.

Angelina also gave us a chance to add to our tin collection, which was very exciting. Not going to lie, we agonised over those tins. I wanted them all. I feel like that was a common theme for this trip.

Once again energetic thanks to pastry and hot chocolate, we set off for the Louvre – and, as I’ve just realised writing this up and looking at the map, somehow managed to miss the Arc de Triomphe along the way? Steph? I know we’re like the blind leading the blind sometimes, but how the heck did we miss that?

Oh well. We’ll just have to go back.

                                                   We did see these, though, so I think we won in the end

Anyway, we made it to La Musée de Louvre, or, at least, the outside. We’d both been inside before, there were the obligatory gazillion tourists waiting to get in, and we already had other plans. So we gave Ms Mona a miss this time.

I had forgotten until I actually stood there that the Louvre was originally a palace. It’s hard to ignore when it’s in front of you.

One of our other main destinations for the day was Notre Dame. 

We both wanted to do the climb, particularly since the day was lovely. So we went inside, followed the perpetual-motion snake of tourists around the interior (where Steph kindly didn’t walk away and leave me as I ran through Que Dieu Aide les Exclus not-quite-under my breath), and then realised we didn’t actually know how to get to the climb-y bit.

Background time: Steph and I both suck at going up to people and asking them things. This includes directions, help, general feedback, etc. Usually we take it in turns to do this paralysing but occasionally unavoidable task. Either it was Steph’s turn that day or I was just being a cow, but in any case, she asked, and the lady told us to pop round the side of the church.

We popped.

It was closed.

We’d had enough.

Giving up on tourist destinations completely, we left Notre Dame with our noses in the air and headed into the city centre for yet another big destination.

City Pharma.

This will probably mean nothing to a lot of people, but if you are into skincare, makeup, or just want to see what the most manic pharmacy in Paris looks like, I recommend a visit. City Pharma is one of the biggest (the biggest?) pharmacies in Paris, and it has amazing discounts on all kinds of French skin, hair, and makeup brands. Caudalie, Nuxe, Bioderma, and heaps more brands that are really only sold in France. The crush of people was horrendous, trying to get upstairs to pay was a nightmare, and at one point I found myself in a corner thinking, ‘There is no way out. I will live in this store forever. I will die in this store.’

But it was so fun and interesting and I definitely recommend it.

However, the one thing we had not really thought through was how heavy our bags from City Pharma would be. And we still had quite a lot of walking to do for our final (and some may say most important) destinations of the day.

Fromageries.

Cheese is important, people.

After serious consideration and research (it’s important, okay?), we had put two fromageries into our plan – Fromagerie de Montmatre and Chez Virginie. Both were on the other side of our Montmatre base to the city, so it was a bit of a trek with our heavy City Pharma bags. Thank goodness for Google maps is all I can say.

At Fromagerie de Montmatre we discovered you are not supposed to pick up the cheese yourself – you are supposed to make your choice and then someone from the store will pick it up for you. This appears to be so that, in your complete and utter lack of knowledge, you don't do something not good to the cheese (pro-tip, guys!).

At Chez Virginie, we discovered that sometimes, just like a person, a cheese needs a beanie. And also you can put champagne or truffle in cheese, and both of these things are amazing, and both of these things in cheese make even more amazing.

And by this time we were exhausted. Our feet were so sore. But we were also very proud, because as far as second days go?

Crushed it.