A Terrible Sense of Direction

Perhaps the problem isn't the lack of road signs. Perhaps the problem isn't the maps. Perhaps the problem just simply comes down to the fact that I have one hell of a terrible sense of direction.

It took me forever to find the Victoria and Albert Museum yesterday, which feels more like your great-grandmother's colonial attic than anything else. It's a marvelously complex and convoluted place with art and design in every nook and cranny. After it taking me over two hours to make my way there after buying my theatre ticket, I walked around in circles for a while before finally landing in the William Morris rooms I wanted in the first place.

Victorian literature has always been the bane of my existence, from high school to undergrad to my glorious mistake to take it in graduate school. But Victorian art and design? I love them, can't get enough of the grand and pretentious manner of it all. There were two William Morris chairs that were absolutely beautiful. Then I wandered around the fashion section, saw some truly fascinating old instruments, then bought my RRBF a small presents, and left.

From there I had dinner by myself (for the first time ever!) and went to see Neil Labute's Some Girl(s). David Schwimmer played the lead, with Saffron Burroughs as the girl that really makes the difference in his life. With any play or film by Labute, I feel as if the ugly under-belly of humanity comes out in funny, witty and acerbic ways. The play was interesting; it's about a man who seeks out four of his ex-girlfriends to have a final heart-to-heart talk to settle everything before he moves on and gets married. He chooses the four women (of a long, long list, so he says) because he feels particularly responsible for their heartbreak. The four women are recognizable stereotypes: the high school "typical" girlfriend you could marry; the hippie, pot-smoking artist; the older, married influential woman; and the one that got away.

I sat there wondering how different the play would have been if it had been told from a woman's perspective. If she was the one travelling back through the annals of her past relationships and wanting to make peace with men she screwed over, and I think it would be a very different play.

It's funny as well, to see Ross up there trying to act his way through a different sort of character he played for how many seasons on television. It was all anyone was talking about around me, whether or not they liked him on friends. He plays to the audience a bit too much and doesn't really have a theatre voice per se, but he does a good job and has wonderful comedic timing. As the woman who sat beside me said, "That was just tremendous!", and it really was. Funny, I saw the opening of A View From the Bridge in Dublin, and then now I saw Some Girls two days away from its closing. A nice bookended theatre experience over my vacation.

Now Elyssa and I are going to take her Wapping Walk, a theatre in sound experience of a neighbourhood. I'm quite looking forward to it. Then I might do some more sightseeing or pack it all in and go to the movies. But I loathe to go back to Leicester Square -- I've never been bothered so much on my trip as the few moments I either sat there or walked through.

T-40 hours until I come home!