My mother’s visiting from Canada. A couple of nights ago we went to see the Tbilisi Marionette Theatre at the Barbican. It’s not your typical Punch and Judy type puppet show. It’s a bit more along the lines of the puppets in “Being John Malkovich”. Except, coming from Georgia, a little more convoluted, a little more Soviet. Think Chekhov on drugs. Or maybe what Chekhov dreams about when he’s on drugs. Or maybe beat poetry written about the dreams of a totally stoned lovechild of Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Catherine the Great’s horse.
The puppets were cool and beautifully made and the puppetry itself was masterfully done and the actors reading the dialogue were excellent. But the narrative was too obtuse for my rapidly aging brain.
I just didn’t really have a clue what the Hell was going on. I think it was about a horse who was in love with another horse, except that maybe he wasn’t a horse but a soldier in the Russian army and the soldier just happened to look like a horse. The play was called “The Battle of Stalingrad” and it took place in Kiev and Berlin and various other locations some of which might have been Stalingrad or maybe Bury St. Edmonds. I couldn’t really tell. At one point the horse died and was brought back to life by a fairy. And there was an ant that seemed to have a fairly pivotal role. And there were various soldiers and artists and other folk hanging out in cafés talking about historical events which I am too ill-educated to remember. Or maybe they were fictional events. Dunno.
It was cool and all and intellectually stimulating, but mainly because I had to use my entire intellect to follow what was happening. My mother, on the other hand, being jet-lagged, just fell asleep.
The day before yesterday, we went a bit more traditionally touristy and saw “Anything Goes” which is a big West End musical with tunes by Cole Porter and story at least partially written by P.G. Wodehouse, amongst others. It was far more accessible and infinitely more difficult to sleep through. Cheesy and loud and fun -- just the thing to make us forget the day’s early embarrassments.
Early in the day, you see, I took my mother to Harvey Nick’s. We managed to make fools of ourselves four times in two hours. It started with lunch in Harvey’s posh dining room. It’s a lovely place and the tables all have very thick tablecloths which are very handy for sopping up water. This turned out to be very handy.
The way I happened to be sitting, my foot was exerting subtle pressure against the base of the table. This pressure built up as we ate lunch. Eventually, the pressure exceeded some kind of threshold and the table shot away from me across the floor. Not far, probably only about three feet, but enough to spill everything on the table. It must have looked a bit like it had been yanked away from us by an invisible bungee cord.
Everyone stared of course. It was definitely a stareable event. It was by far the loudest thing that had happened in the restaurant in some time, the taste of the diners running more to muted pinks and beige. The staff wasn’t fazed though. The waiter very kindly and smilingly cleaned everything up and pushed the table back into place.
Half an hour later exactly the same thing happened again. I think it was at this point that they marked us down as being not exactly the Harvey Nick’s sort.
After lunch we did a bit of shopping. We found some lovely hats in the designer Men’s section. There were a bit pricey though: £275 - £330 each. Since we couldn’t afford to buy them we decided we should take a picture of ourselves wearing them. This greatly distressed the department manager and he told us to stop. This, in turn, greatly flustered my mother and so she left her shopping behind. The shopping now, of course, became a suspect package to be treated with great caution.
Fortunately, one of the manager’s assistants spotted us a short while later and asked us to come identify the bag my mother had left behind. Once again, we felt grossly embarrassed and ran away into the “casual” department and then out through a trendy noodle bar onto the street.
Next time she comes I think we’ll try Marks and Spencer.