London

June 23, 2011

Morning. I have had my coffee at a little café I wandered to, on one of these lovely streets I never seem to have occasion to explore. Meet the kids in an hour. The sky is dappled with light and cloud, exactly the kind of day you cannot figure out whether rain or shine.

Last night at the Wyndham’s, Much Ado about Nothing. The production was a little over-wrought, but that turned out to be a quality rather than a deficit. It was accessible, radiant, joyful. It was expressed like a TV show, in the best possible way, with all of that medium’s immediacy and low humanity. Beatrice was a bit of a hag, and clearly twenty years Benedick’s senior, but that folded into the radiance and all was well. It was the first production I’ve seen which allowed Claudio to look like more than a stupid boy, doing so by giving him a scene of silent anguish-- which Shakespeare might have done himself–who knows? Benedick was David Tennant, a recent Dr. Who, and he may have been the reason why the theater was packed and why I could only get a ticket in the wheelchair accessible box with a door that opens from the street. Whatever the draw, the huge crowd laughed uproariously at all the right places. No one had told them this was not a popular entertainment. The usher staff at the Wyndam was kind and gracious, which must be noted, and helped the man who was really in a wheelchair in and out with undramatic solicitude. This Much Ado joins the select ranks of those productions– The Tempest at the Globe, Playboy at the Abbey, Othello at the Trafalgar– which made me weep in gratitude. The woman to my right is a grad student at USC here for a year to study at the London School of Economics, and an autograph collector who was laying her nets for Mr. Tennant.

I remembered good company at O’Neills on Great Queen (I think it is) from the last time, so I stopped there, and it was golden again. Many beautiful young women– I mean shockingly beautiful, from svelte golden goddesses to sultry deep-bosomed Hispanics with hair like night. It must have been a convention of Dryads, out of the woods and into the city for a night of theater. The man to my left is a businessman who had been to most states, except North Carolina, including the Goodyear plant in Topeka. When I told him Goodyear had been my first employment, he remarked on the littleness of the world. His name is Mark. Vomited copiously on the way home, behind such cover as I could find in this over-lit city. When I came through the door, Rob informed me that John was unaccounted for. I assumed nothing could be done right then. If he is not at roll-call this morning, a new drama opens.

A happy baby lives in the flat across the way. Its laughter lights up the air

Afternoon. Took my charges down Farringdon to St Paul’s, where they climbed up into the dome, and I did not. We are not set up so that I get their impressions of things immediately; I hope the impressions filter down in time, so I know if they were changed or delighted in ways that did not spill out of them immediately. There was a military service in the crypt, with prayers and men at attention and, eventually, a trumpet. Across the Millennium Bridge– everyone calls it the Harry Potter Bridge– to the Tate Modern, where I set them at liberty, essentially until Saturday morning. The special exhibit at the Tate is Miro, who delights me more deeply and more consistently than most of the Moderns, whom I always find radiant and soulful and worth contemplation. As well as an encouragement to my own work. The Miros made me happier than anything yet on this British sojourn– except maybe the discovery that my students are sweet, and respectful of where they are and what they are seeing, which was not notably the case last year.

Romans are suave. Florentines are aristocratic. Dubliners are soulful. Londoners are fun.

John had come safely home even before I was alerted to the situation, as the marrow of me assumed.

No internet access here. Not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. It keeps me from worry, but it also makes me worry about things which, maybe, I should be attending to.