Monday, January 9, 2012

Mark Rylance in Jerusalem

One of the hardest-to-get theater tickets in London is for the play Jerusalem, starring Mark Rylance. Without naming names of certain nice people, and possibly causing those certain people grief when other desperate friends are looking for tickets, Robin was able to score one "and possibly two" tickets to the Friday night performance.

I'll go along, just in case the possible second ticket materializes. If it doesn't, I'm prepared to sit in a nearby pub with my iPhone camera and a sketchbook. Sounds fun either way.

Mark Rylance in Jerusalem, at the Apollo Theatre.

I've seen Mark (a Tony Award winner) in several stage plays and several movies and the guy is a real chameleon. I've also been around him in person (breakfast at Harry's Roadhouse in Santa Fe, spending the night on the stage of the Globe Theatre in London... the usual stuff) and it totally freaks me out that all these characters are the same guy. He's been getting rave reviews and accolades, and is being called one of the finest actors of our time. Last year I saw him in Le Bete, in which his entrance was a 20-minute non-stop, fast-paced, manic monologue. The other actors were just standing on stage with their jaws dropped, partly because of the script and partly because of the performance.

We're also getting tickets to Hamlet at The Young Vic (the newer theater version of The Old Vic just down the street). Wally and Maria (flatmates) have already seen it, but hey, can you see Hamlet too many times? Depends on who you ask, but for everyone I'm following around and trying to keep up with, the answer is definitely "No." Hamlet will probably go on next week's calendar. 

Flat report: The flat here is pretty darn nice. Very roomy living area, kinda roomy kitchen (for a London flat), and not-very-roomy bedrooms (which doubles as an office).

Wally sits at his makeshift desk in the living area, made from wooden TV-tray-stye folding tables he picked up from a church. The dining table is a very low-sitting coffee table that Wally and Marie put on top of a TV stand to make a dining room table. Tube trains go by many times a day, just on the other side of the trees outside, but we never hear them unless we're sitting in the living room. Even then, we're barely aware they're there.