![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Aug. 22nd, 2009 11:11 pmWent to the Tricycle in London to see Pornography. Not what you think - it's a play about the week in July 2005 that encompassed Live 8, London winning the Olympic bid, and the 7/7 bombings.
Coming out of Kilburn Park tube, on hitting the High Road I stopped off at the first kebab shop to refuel before making the long walk down to the theatre. Just before the Tricycle, I had to go round a police cordon. As, after going out into the road and round two police cars, I arrived back by the barrier ready to return to the pavement, an elderly Irish lady passed and told me the reason for the cordon. A young man had just had a heart attack, hit his head on the pavement and died. She was really in the mood for a chat, asking where I came from and what I was doing in Kilburn - it turned out that as I was wearing a T-shirt with 'Ireland' on it (a souvenir of a trip to Dublin) she'd taken me for an Irishman. She asked if I had any Irish links; I replied that my great-grandad was Irish, so, still standing on the kerb by the barrier, I ended up confirming, in reply to her queries, that my father and I had been born over here. As soon as she established that I was in town to visit the theatre that we were standing virtually in front of, she said 'nice meeting you' and said a friendly goodbye, probably not wanting to make me late for the play. No worries - there was still nearly an hour to spare. Into the theatre cafe for a couple of Pepsis.
The play was very interesting, depicting vignettes in the thoughts and lives of several very different Londoners at various points during that eventful week. As one who was firmly in the pro-Olympic camp at the time and still is, for me, even though I'd left London by then, those two days are a particularly poignant memory, the jubilation of winning the bid rapidly giving way to the devastation and grief wrought by the bomb attack. While one of the play's characters was also a supporter of the Games bid, this contrast was a little diluted in the rest of the play by several characters being in the anti camp. Billy Seymour performed superbly as a troubled (and, it turns out, psychopathic and fascist) schoolboy; Kirsty Bushell, whom I'd seen before on both stage and TV, turned in a moving performance as a woman consumed with incestuous passion for her brother; while Sheila Reid's portrayal of a lonely ageing part-time academic, whose hobby is writing porn, was deeply affecting. Perhaps the most interesting was Anthony Welsh as one of the Tube bombers, who downplays what he is actually going to do, delivering stream of consciousness monologues with minutiae of his and his comrades' travel plans, how crowded the tube stations are, and similar observations. The only references are in the form of 'will I get the code in the right order?' If anything, mentioning his mission only by suggestion makes it even more sinister - combined with him seeming an ostensibly self-effacing, calm and polite young man.
In my train carriage home were several Arsenal supporters coming from their game with Portsmouth, and a group of Pompey fans who made up loud raucous songs for the whole of the journey, a number of them rather off-colour and many of them mocking Arsenal giving their fans free scarves...
Home for TNA iMPACT! Gutted that Madison Rayne is out of the Beautiful People :( I do hope she'll get some decent storylines, she's too good a Knockout to be wasted the way Raisha Saeed is.
Coming out of Kilburn Park tube, on hitting the High Road I stopped off at the first kebab shop to refuel before making the long walk down to the theatre. Just before the Tricycle, I had to go round a police cordon. As, after going out into the road and round two police cars, I arrived back by the barrier ready to return to the pavement, an elderly Irish lady passed and told me the reason for the cordon. A young man had just had a heart attack, hit his head on the pavement and died. She was really in the mood for a chat, asking where I came from and what I was doing in Kilburn - it turned out that as I was wearing a T-shirt with 'Ireland' on it (a souvenir of a trip to Dublin) she'd taken me for an Irishman. She asked if I had any Irish links; I replied that my great-grandad was Irish, so, still standing on the kerb by the barrier, I ended up confirming, in reply to her queries, that my father and I had been born over here. As soon as she established that I was in town to visit the theatre that we were standing virtually in front of, she said 'nice meeting you' and said a friendly goodbye, probably not wanting to make me late for the play. No worries - there was still nearly an hour to spare. Into the theatre cafe for a couple of Pepsis.
The play was very interesting, depicting vignettes in the thoughts and lives of several very different Londoners at various points during that eventful week. As one who was firmly in the pro-Olympic camp at the time and still is, for me, even though I'd left London by then, those two days are a particularly poignant memory, the jubilation of winning the bid rapidly giving way to the devastation and grief wrought by the bomb attack. While one of the play's characters was also a supporter of the Games bid, this contrast was a little diluted in the rest of the play by several characters being in the anti camp. Billy Seymour performed superbly as a troubled (and, it turns out, psychopathic and fascist) schoolboy; Kirsty Bushell, whom I'd seen before on both stage and TV, turned in a moving performance as a woman consumed with incestuous passion for her brother; while Sheila Reid's portrayal of a lonely ageing part-time academic, whose hobby is writing porn, was deeply affecting. Perhaps the most interesting was Anthony Welsh as one of the Tube bombers, who downplays what he is actually going to do, delivering stream of consciousness monologues with minutiae of his and his comrades' travel plans, how crowded the tube stations are, and similar observations. The only references are in the form of 'will I get the code in the right order?' If anything, mentioning his mission only by suggestion makes it even more sinister - combined with him seeming an ostensibly self-effacing, calm and polite young man.
In my train carriage home were several Arsenal supporters coming from their game with Portsmouth, and a group of Pompey fans who made up loud raucous songs for the whole of the journey, a number of them rather off-colour and many of them mocking Arsenal giving their fans free scarves...
Home for TNA iMPACT! Gutted that Madison Rayne is out of the Beautiful People :( I do hope she'll get some decent storylines, she's too good a Knockout to be wasted the way Raisha Saeed is.
