My family have been over all reading week, so this is a little of what we got up to - starting with yesterday and working backwards.
First we went to the Rainforest Cafe, which was fun as always. I’ve never liked the food all that much, but the experience was fun and I had a terrific cocktail.
Next we hit the Victoria and Albert museum – which is my ideal for what a museum should be. They’re only ever sparingly informative. If you want to learn something, read a book or even watch a documentary – you’ll learn more. I regard museums as art galleries – an opportunity to look at interesting stuff. While the V&A pretends to be educational, it’s just a huge cabinet of curiosities we pinched from the empire and have yet to return. Its history, in fact, stems from the Victorian Great Exhibition – which was also, more or less, the world’s greatest bric-a-brac store. And so there’s a room on China, and one on radios, and one on sculpture, and one on fashion – and really, no logical coherence between them. They’re just all gorgeous. It’s like a trip through Picture of Dorian Gray’s epic Chapter 11 – some twenty pages of description, of jewels and clothes and images and smells and colours. “Even to read of the luxury of the dead was marvellous” he thinks, and that’s what the V&A is: a shrine to the luxury of the dead. I sat in a replica parlour from Henrietta Street. I tried on a hoop skirt. I saw carved tombstones, cups, wedding tiaras, a silver chatelaine (read: Swiss Army belt), ivory statues of gods, 1950s radios, and individually bound copies of every Booker prize winner.
We are going to go back. And spend longer there. For one thing, they’ve got a Bernini statue in their new exhibition, which I must go ogle.
First we went to the Rainforest Cafe, which was fun as always. I’ve never liked the food all that much, but the experience was fun and I had a terrific cocktail.
Next we hit the Victoria and Albert museum – which is my ideal for what a museum should be. They’re only ever sparingly informative. If you want to learn something, read a book or even watch a documentary – you’ll learn more. I regard museums as art galleries – an opportunity to look at interesting stuff. While the V&A pretends to be educational, it’s just a huge cabinet of curiosities we pinched from the empire and have yet to return. Its history, in fact, stems from the Victorian Great Exhibition – which was also, more or less, the world’s greatest bric-a-brac store. And so there’s a room on China, and one on radios, and one on sculpture, and one on fashion – and really, no logical coherence between them. They’re just all gorgeous. It’s like a trip through Picture of Dorian Gray’s epic Chapter 11 – some twenty pages of description, of jewels and clothes and images and smells and colours. “Even to read of the luxury of the dead was marvellous” he thinks, and that’s what the V&A is: a shrine to the luxury of the dead. I sat in a replica parlour from Henrietta Street. I tried on a hoop skirt. I saw carved tombstones, cups, wedding tiaras, a silver chatelaine (read: Swiss Army belt), ivory statues of gods, 1950s radios, and individually bound copies of every Booker prize winner.
We are going to go back. And spend longer there. For one thing, they’ve got a Bernini statue in their new exhibition, which I must go ogle.
After that, Alice and I hit the tube to go and see Spring Awakening. It’s her new favourite musical, which alarmed me from the start – as I’ve never liked Wicked or RENT 100%. It’s 1880-something, and eight young people are trying to cope with life, sex, love, sex, homework, sex, sex, parents and sex. You’d think that teenagers didn’t have anything else on their minds. I liked Melchior because he seemed to have outside interests, like bringing down Western civilisation. Also, he was rather easy on the eyes.
I just objected to the storyline in the strongest terms, and while I could cope with the first half, the second really made me sick.
Firstly, the period peeved me off. In the Q&A afterwards they claimed it had been deliberately modernised to be more relevant, as if we couldn’t handle it as a period piece. If the plot is relevant, it remains relevant. End of. And allow the audiences to draw their own inferences. I’m actually quite curious to read the original 1880s play now.
But most importantly, I didn’t sympathise with the characters. I just took exception to the misery. Why put yourself through it? I’m easily upset, and so sitting through two hours and twenty of death and despair – guess what – upsets me! Which is what it’s supposed to do, but I could have told you in advance that sad things were sad. I don’t feel I’ve learnt anything from the musical. Of course, you can say “but Unmutual, you hate happy endings too!” Which is true. I suppose I like surprising yet appropriate endings, and this musical just felt manipulative. Life is wonderful, and so is love, and so I almost find this wallowing in misery almost offensive. You’ve got a job convincing me that (fictional) suicides are sad, for example, instead of just stupid. Lord Henry puts it better than me:
"I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores, the better."
Of course, he’s talking in the context of poor people in Whitechapel – and life’s genuine sores are obviously important and shouldn’t be ignored. Yet they should be avoided in fiction unless you’re going to do something truly interesting with it. Finally, I’m sure the moral is that “sexual repression is bad” – although there’s an intriguing alternate moral in there about chastity being by far the best policy.
Overall analysis? It’s RENT – with plaits and homework. But the music is quite lovely, so if you can handle the misery (you might even enjoy it). And there’s a real sense of being at the centre of something exciting – this is The Big Musical right now, and with its transfer to the West End its sights are only rising.
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