Tag: Theatre

I’m in a New york state of mind

thegirlinthecafe 14 Comments

The Vertical HourBut I know what I’m needing
and I’m not going to waste more time
I’m in a NewYork state of mind.

It was so easy living day by day
out of touch with the rhythm and blues
Now I need a little give and take
the New York Times and the Daily News, ohh

Comes down to reality and its fine with me
cause I’ve let it slide
I don’t care if it’s China Town
or up on Riverside
I don’t have any reasons
cause I’ve left them all behind
I’m in a New York State of mind …

I just spent an enormous amount of money.
On 2 tickets.
For a theatre show.
In New York.
Around christmas time.
It has Bill Nighy in it.
IT-HAS-BILL-NIGHY-IN-IT!

I am nearly dying of happiness here.

Christmas time in New York, I wonder how that is going to be.
Now I all I need is a planeticket, and a place to sleep there.

Oh, 2 tickets you might wonder?
Yes. It is for 2 different dates. One time just isn’t enough.
Call me crazy. Go on. I am crazy. Still. Crazy.

Going crazy in an internetcafe gives you a lot of attention…

A Moon for the Misbegotten review – or Lost in Spacey

thegirlinthecafe 10 Comments


And so I saw The Moon for the Misbegotten. Just a few facts before I give my verdict:
For me Kevin Spacey is the second best actor in the Universe, I think he is fantastic, no matter what he plays.
I also saw him on stage as Richard II in the Old Vic last year, and loved it, despite my total lack of Shakespearian background and my ears not totally geared to tune in to old English.

Read More

Cool, cooler, coolest

thegirlinthecafe 2 Comments


Kevin Spacey in front of the Old Vic (Picture AP)

Cool.
gregarius feedreader
I have long been looking for a feedreader that does the things I like a feed reader to do. Now I found it. I will add the sites I regularly read to it, press refresh once or twice a day, and voila. You can add del.icio.us feeds to it too, to make it even cooler. And what a beautiful default template. A real gem this feedreader with the slightly odd name.
Download here

Cooler.
Print your flickr photo’s as business cards
Ironically I just had a stack of business cards made last week, in The Cafe style with the big cup (from the header of this blog) on it, and in the same colours as the blog. But these moo cards are very cool too, select a bunch of your best pictures, and turn them into small business cards. I want some made from my Postcards in London photoblog. They are so cool that I am not even sure I want to hand them out.

Coolest.
The coolest thing of the day :
It is the 20th of September. After a long wait, tonight is the night for a visit to the majestic The Old Vic to watch one of my heroes perform in A Moon For The Misbegotten. I haven’t seen any reviews yet (it is still in preview stage), but I’ll write mine tomorrow. And I am going to see it again when it is out of preview stage.
I look very very very much forward to this. And if you are in London before the end of December, I would buy tickets for it if I were you.

New York, New York at last?

thegirlinthecafe 10 Comments

The last few times when I had to decide where to travel to on holiday, I had no idea where to go. So I waited. I waited because I knew that the answer to that luxury question would suddenly present itself somehow and then I would go.

That happened about a year ago with Greenland. Greenland had been on my “to-see” list (I am a list person) for a while already, and suddenly a chance popped up. My musical heroes were going to play a concert there, and everything felt into place. I went to see Greenland for a week, and attended the concert in the middle of nowhere in a icecovered Greenland and I had a fantastic trip.

Now on the same list it says “New York”.
I have been wanting to see New York for a while now, but never really got to it. I need a kind of push in the back to actually get going so to speak. I think the push has arrived now:

“I am going to do a play at the end of the year in New York, in fact. I am going to do a play called, “The Vertical Hour”, written by David Hare, with Julianne Moore, directed by Sam Mendes …sounds good doesn’t it, and then there’s me! [laughter] Anyway … I’ll fuck it up. “

If this really is going to happen (and if I can get any tickets at all), I am absolutely going, despite november not rrrreally being the best period of the year to be there, weatherwise that is. But if I can travel to an iceberg in Greenland to see Steffen Brandt, I certainly can travel to New York to see him, on stage. And I will.

Of course he is not going to fuck it up (don’t you just love this guy), he is going to be the star of the play, I’m sure. And the director being Sam Mendes, he is going to be a true American Beauty, with a delicious English accent. Just as long as he returns to London after that, because we like having him over here.

The Sultan’s Elephant is coming to Antwerp

thegirlinthecafe Leave a comment

The fantastic Sultan’s Elephant theatre spectacle will be coming to Antwerp between July 6th and 9th.

If you want to experience this forty-foot high mechanical elephant, the little girl, and the time-travelling Sultan , well then you know where to go.

I would really really recommend to catch this spectacle. And to all the Dutch people reading this, this is your chance. Don’t miss it.

Stomp, Vaudeville theatre, London

thegirlinthecafe 3 Comments

You have to know that all the theatreshows in London are being advertised as “The best show in London” and “Not to be missed” and then the name of a newspaper and the obligatory “*****”.

So I went to see Stomp, in the Vaudeville theatre on Strand. Because I like drums and percussion and rhythm, and can remember very clearly how extatic I got watching Yamato – The drummers of Japan, when I saw them in Aarhus a while ago.

So Stomp: “Stomp is an explosion of movement and rhythms that is at all times entertaining and on occasion amusing or thrilling.”
Sounded interesting. And it was fun in the beginning, but after 15 minutes I got kind of bored. The show is basically just one long chain of people hammering on stuff. On sweepers, on wood, on metal on everything. And they do it in a very rhytmic way, and the audience loved it, I could tell. But I wasn’t too impressed. Maybe because I have seen so many cool things already here in London (Blue Men and big Elephants had no problem whatsoever to impress me).

But after them banging on for a while I got irritated. The next act began. A few people entered the stage with newspaper. And I thought – if they are going to make noise with them too I am going to bang my head against the chair.

So today I have a headache.

If you want to see concept theatre, go see the Blue Man, if you want to see a decent play, there are plenty to pick from, and I don’t mean We Will Rock You or Mama Mia. My ticket for Kevin Spacey’s The Moon for the misbegotten arrived in my mailbox yesterday, and I can’t wait to see him. I’m convinced that he is going to be really good.

Market Boy – The National Theatre, London

thegirlinthecafe 7 Comments

[Picture on it’s way]

After 2 days of indoor nose blowing, today was the day to get out again. Back to work, and much better, back to London. I missed being in the city, I missed him and him, and the Southbank, and the feeling of just being here. The weather was making the evening close to perfect, and I gave it the finishing touch by buying another mango blaster and sit down on a bench on the South bank.

One of the reasons why London is such a cool city is this. While reading my book, and writing a bit, thinking about what we might do this evening, I suddenly realised that I was about a 100 meters away from the National Theatre.

Read More

My name is Rachel Corrie, Playhouse theatre – London

thegirlinthecafe 3 Comments

The Playhouse Theatre
I did give the half price booth of TKTS a go again yesterday. I was there on Saturday afternoon around 3pm, and the queue was impressively long. So long that I was in doubt if I wanted to queue at all. But I had my book with me, and the sun was doing it’s best to shine, so I did go for it. I timed it : it took me 20 minutes from the end of the queue to the little window of the ticket service desk. Unfortunately there wasn’t a man with a nice voice this time.

Read More

Blue Man Group – London

thegirlinthecafe 5 Comments

Blue Man Group

I took a picture of this bus on one of my first days in London, after my move, in the beginning of March. Already there I noticed the face of this Blue Man on the bus. And these blue faces popup on several places in London, in the underground, in cafe’s, in cinemas. Just the fact that their faces are so incredibly blue was enough reason for me to put them on my (long) “must-see” list. And today somehow ended up being the day where I saw them : The Blue Man Group, in The New London Theatre in Covent Garden.
Read More

Microhappiness indeed

thegirlinthecafe 5 Comments

“Hopefully it won’t take long before we’ll see a show with this guy on the London West End. He surely has talent.”
The Guardian

“More yak, less bull”
The Evening Standard

“Moving, funny, and an absolute original. And where did he get that cool outfit?”
The Daily Mirror

“.. and a cd with all the songs from the show was included in the price. Best value for money.”
The Financial Times

“Far better than Vogon poetry, and a totally outerspace experience …”
The Magrathea Daily

Richard II in Old Vic

thegirlinthecafe 4 Comments

Kevin Spacey - Richard II Ik kocht het kaartje enkel en alleen voor Kevin Spacey, wist bijna niets van Shakespeare en al helemaal niets van Richard II. Ik las het stuk in het engels, maar het oude engels was zo moeilijk te volgen dat ik opgaf. Ik vreesde er niet veel van te kunnen volgen.

Maar dat viel allemaal erg mee. Het was gedeeltelijk in het oud engels, maar met uiterste concentratie was het goed te volgen. Kevin begon in een prachtig paars fluwelen koningdracht met kroon en juwelen, maar dat werd al snel omgewisseld voor moderne Armani pakkken. (Kevin in een suit, je zag de damesharten smelten). Het verhaal speelde ook in een moderne setting met een prachtig decor, en moderne zaken als mobieltelefoons en lcd schermen.

En langzaam werd ik het verhaal in getrokken. Hoofdzakelijk door het fantastisch acteerwerk van vooral Kevin Spacey. Ik vind hem magisch in bijna al zijn speelfilms. En hier stond ie, in levende lijve op nog geen 6 meter af stand van mij op het podium. Surreal but nice !

En theater is anders dan film, het moet in een keer goed, en het is meer intens. Afgezien van Kevin was Richard II ook een aangrijpend stuk, en dus echt aan te bevelen. Spacey speelt tot eind november, en komt terug in een nieuw stuk in Old Vic in het najaar van 2006. Ik kijk er nu al naar uit. Kevin is cool.

Ik vermaak me hier meer dan uitstekend.

Blue Orange

thegirlinthecafe 2 Comments

Blue Orange - Bill NighyI send them a mail about a month ago, with the request to get access. I didn’t actually expect them to give tourists access. But a few days later I got an email back from them, with an official invitation, they had made a reservation for me on Friday the 4th of November at 10.15. I had to meet up at their reception with my passport and the invitation. And so I took the tube.

At the gate I pushed a button, and the loudspeaker asked me for my name. I answered and cringled myself through the turning fence. I followed the arrows to “reception”. I went up the stairs and presented myself with the man behind the glass window. I gave him my passport and invitation, and wrote my name on the visitor list. I got a visitor pass which I clipped on to my jeans. A man walked with me showing me the way. We walked through a long corridor, and I had to use my visitor pass to open the first door. We walked on and ended in front of door number 2, which I again opened with my magical pass. The man was leaving me now, telling me I should walk to the end of the corridor where someone would be waiting for me.

I walked through the long corridor and ended in a space where a man behind a pc welcomed me.
I gave him my magical pass, and got a form I had to fill out. I did just that, and I now got a daypass. Pfew, so far so good.

The man behind the pc walked to the cupboard and came back with the materials I had reserved. I was guided to a small seperate room, I got a set of headphones, and was seated behind a tv and a video machine. It did feel like entering Ford Knox, but after all the checks, double checks and forms I was now ready for the thing I came for.

I enjoyed 1 hour and 50 minutes of Blue / Orange, I laughed quite a lot, and it was all for free.

This was also English bureaucracy in a nutshell, but it was completely worth it. Bill was fantastic.