Riotous Angels from America

On Tuesday night, our RADA gang went to the Malborough Arms (an Aussie pub in London) to celebrate Jonathan’s 21st and Morgan's (in her 30's!) birthdays. The above photos reveal the crazy Acting Shakespeare mob.
Then, after surviving the day’s classes on little sleep, and feeling a little shaky, we spent Wednesday night watching a showing of Troilus and Cressida by the 1st year RADA acting students on the 3-year course. They were extremely good and we all agreed it was a performance we would have paid money for. Even more wonderful, is that the director, Nona Shepphard is to direct my group (half of the whole class) in our final abridged production, that we will be rehearsing in the last two weeks of the course. Her direction was highly innovative and playful. Rumour has it, that Nona’s shows are always very good :-)

Thursday night Chukwudi invited me out to the Lyric theatre in Hammersmith to watch Angels in America, and to meet his mate, the brilliant actor Greg Hicks, who was playing Roy Cohn. The show was magnificent. I had forgotten how much I love this play. I am seeing so much great theatre here, I am running out of fresh adjectives in my vocabulary. But this one was extra good. And it was refreshing to see a contemporary show, not that I have had enough of Shakespeare- not even remotely!

Friday evening I had a dinner date with my RADA friend Athena, who lives just around the corner from me. Athena has cerebal palsy, and I had my first encounter with the inefficient London police as she asked me to call them when her wheelchair tyre exploded on our way to the bus stop. While we hoped they’d be able to assist by calling a wheelchair-friendly vehicle for us, my 999 call was met with “that’s not a police matter”…and no offer of alternative assistance. It seemed they just could not be bothered. Staff at the Tube station were friendly but not altogether helpful. By the time I got back to Athena, sans solution, she had managed to begin manoevering the mechanical wheelchair on the flat tyre. So we got on the bus and headed out our home way. Then our bus trip was made extraordinarily lengthy due to delays and detours as a result of the bomb scares. We eventually made it to her flat, but because the chair was now quite out of action, and dining out was no longer an option, I walked down the street to get takeaway. Athena sent me to a super funky Cuban restaurant, where they made concession to do take away for us, based on our tale of tyre woe. While I waited I happened to sit down next to an actor, who’d trained at RADA! So we had a brief chat – he’d just finished doing a show with the sister of a guy I work with at Christies. Even London is small. Back at the flat, the food was well worth the wait and we had a girls’ night gossiping about our RADA class and the production of Romeo and Juliet we are to begin rehearsing in two weeks!! Very, very exciting.