My weekend

So yes, after the hell that was last week, the weekend was so much fun. On Saturday I went up to London for the day and met up with my dear friend Rob. My ex-boss had arranged free tickets for Rob and I to see Blackbird at the matinee. It's an intense two hour no intermission play, a two hander between a 50-something man and the late 20's ish woman who confronts him about the illegal relationship they had when she was 12. I wanted to see it mainly because the female role was being played by Jodhi May who I have adored for a fair while now and have seen on stage before and always found her mesmerising. She didn't disappoint me here, delivering a complex and layered performance that wavered between an unnerving beguile sexiness and tightly controlled fury that was just tremendous. However, when she walks on stage, she's wearing a knee length leather coat and when she spoke her first lines, I thought "God, she's loud", completely booming over her male co-star. Then she removes her coat and when she turned her back to the audience, I was like "wait, is that a mic pack?". It was. As the play went on, it became clear that she had a cold and shouldn't really sound as much like Brenda Vacarro as she did and she had a whole heck of a lot of shouting and crying to do. So I figured that was why she had a body mic on. But it was occasionally distracting, though not as distracting as the horribly awkward and unnecessary coda that demanded a complete set change, soft rock music and bizarre slow mo dance style fighting between the two of them that was just ruinously awful. What's more, some online research revealed that said coda is NOT in the text and is something imposed by the director who should be taken out and shot. It completely undermines what had been an intense and troubling play.

After the play, Rob and I went to TGI Fridays and drank cocktails and he bought me dinner and listened to my woes of the last two weeks. It was when I was telling him what had been going on that it really hit home just how stressed out I was about it all. As I was walking him to the tube station to get his train back to somewhere entirely too far north, I bumped into a friend I used to work with, which was a joy. Then, I decided on the spur of the moment to drop by the Novello Theatre where another friend I haven't seen for ages works and see if he was there. He was, and he was SO happy to see me I was quite taken aback. He's the manager there and so he was trying to be all professional as there was a show about to start but he gave up after about 15 seconds of that and gave me a huge prolonged tight hug and then we gossiped for about 40 minutes while he ignored all the customers. Fabulous. Oh and speaking of hugs, Rob delivered a hug from a certain someone that was just delicious.

Then it was home again and on to Sunday. We had a press screening in the morning for Brick which I was really looking forward to, it's had great reviews and some friends in the US had seen it and raved about it. I hated it. HATED it. Not to say it's a bad film, it isn't. But it didn't work for me. I didn't care about the characters or the plot and the self conscious, post modern, stylised but horribly clumsy dialogue drove me up the fucking wall. I found myself staring at my watch from about 30 minutes in and as the film dragged interminably on, I also found myself staring at the walls, floor and celling as they were all more interesting.

After that thundering disappointment, my friend Louisa was down in Brighton for the day so we went for a long lunch which stretched into dinner. I might be moving in to her attic when I move back to London so we had to be practical and grown up as well as gossipy bitches. And now it's Monday but I don't have to work as it's a bank holiday. Woot. And after a horribly rainy start it looks like it's going to be a sunny afternoon. Woot woot!