London: Dec 8: Saatchi Gallery, Theatre, and more

Wednesday, December 8, 2010, was a great day. Every place I went for both day and evening outings was fun.

First, I stopped by Leicester Square to pick up theatre tickets from the discount theatre booth there. I like walking by Leicester Square because many blocks surrounding it are pedestrianized. I continue, however, to think that the "Chinatown" one block away is an embarrassment to real Chinatowns everywhere.

Next, I trotted over to the National Gallery to see two small, new displays. Both turned out to be pretty cool.

One showed works by Ben Johnson. His pieces, actually paintings, are photographic but linear. He converts everything in his original photographs into line stencils, then spraypaints through them. It's a unique look in the full meaning of the word.

The other exhibit showed works by Bridget Riley. Most of her works play funky optical effects on your eye. For instance, Composition with Circles 7 (note: not a repeating pattern) makes one see weird bumps in the wall and double-vision in places. Meanwhile, Saraband looks like it has depth and that the lines wiggle. Similarly, Arrest 3 looks like it's moving, like waves, and has depth.

After these two exhibits at the National Gallery, I was in an exuberant mood and craving additional high-quality art. I headed over to Chelsea to visit the Saatchi Gallery. I loved it, actually more than almost all museums I've visited in London. It reminded me that some contemporary art truly is amazing. I took a picture in every other room. Here's a link to the pictures. In addition, the gallery space is open and welcoming, and, best yet, some art pieces have a sense of humor--admittedly a raunchy one--but one that nevertheless livens up a museum visit.

In the evening, I was to meet Di Yin at Waterloo Station so we could grab dinner and see our play. (Yes, our play's theatre was not in the West End, a.k.a. the theatre district.) We couldn't find each other at the station for a long time--Di Yin forgot her phone and our meeting location directions weren't clear enough--so we didn't end up having dinner together, but we found each other in time for the show.

We saw A Flea in Her Ear at The Old Vic theatre. Built in the early nineteenth century, The Old Vic is (naturally) an old building with an ornate, pretty interior. The play is a fun farce, a madcap romp of mistaken identity and comically disastrous rendezvouses. The plot revolves around a wife trying to trap her husband into revealing an affair (which doesn't exist) at the same time as other members of their household staff attempt to meet up (for their own affairs) at the same hotel.

The case of mistaken identity--the husband / master of the house, and the hotel's bellhop--were played by the same actor. This was an impressive feat that meant frequent changes in voice, physical habits, and costume. The actor did it seamlessly.

Beside the absurdity of the situations, many jokes come from pronunciations: the guy who drops his consonants, and the Spaniard (who speaks Spanish and also English with a Spanish accent). Sometimes I understood enough of what was being said to get the joke; other times I did not. Most laughs in the play, though, come from the situations.

The play is much in the style of Moliere. (An additional connection: the play was written in French.)