With the working crowd hopefully doing family things at home, we look forward to having the city to ourselves – wrong. Weekend London is thronging with families and tourists. Everything is packed. We took the morning to relax, heading out to the Royal Court Theatre at Sloane Square for a one pm booking in their Café and a 2:30 curtain time. Ed headed out for a batchelor visit to The British Museum where he enjoyed the Sunken Cities: Egypt's Lost Cities.
We were to take our local tube to Embankment, change for the District or Circle lines and voila, Sloan Square – wrong. District and Circle Lines closed at Embankment all weekend for repairs. We hopped on a bus heading for Sloan Square, and it gets slower and slower, then stops and the driver announces he is getting off to make way for the new driver who is on his way. Hmmmm, so I ask how long a wait and am assured it won’t be more than five minutes, but there are diversions around Sloan Square, so we will be further delayed. We hop a taxi, who takes a most circuitous route and we arrive 15 minutes late. So much for public transportation. Nice enough lunch, nothing to write home about.
The play, Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1,2,3) by Suzan Lori-Parks premiered at The Public Theater in New York in 2014. Ms. Parks won the Pulitzer Prize for theater in 2002. The London reviews called the play imaginative, playful and theatrical. We found the first two parts long and somewhat contrived. However, Part 3 was wonderful, mostly because of the introduction of a talking dog. The main protagonist is Hero, a slave who fights for the South, serving his master. He fears freedom because he is literally worth more as a slave than as a freeman. Hero is not much of a hero and the play ends with his fellow slaves leaving the farm to head North while Hero remains. Parts 4 – 9 have not yet been produced. A good, but not great, afternoon of theater.
Norah and I call our friend, Addie Lee, for a car home. Lucky for Ed, The British Museum is a five minute walk from our apartment.
Bus selfie - we think we are home free.
Trotters and sulkies passing the bus and further tying up traffic on Saturday. Never could find anything about them.
Royal Court Theatre on Sloane Square
Norah enjoys the largest and sweetest apple cider at the Cafe.
Good, but not great, theater.