(in no particular order) 
I now realise Madonna might have a point in not letting Rocco or Lourdes watch tv... m'Ma is watching some quite frightening load of cock called WHATEVER LOVE IS on ITV (the clue to it being shite is in the channel) I had hoped we were over the tv-drama-based-on-the-life-of-the-royals after the genius that was DIANA: A TRIBUTE TO THE PEOPLE'S PRINCESS.
Ekdal, his business partner, to carry the can for a wrong business move resulting in him falling on hard times. 
Gregors is furious and determines that Hjalmar must be told that his whole life is built on the money of the man who ruined his father. He talks his way into being Hjalmar's lodger and starts on his campaign of Truth.... with devastating results.
On Saturday O and I went to see Stephen Sondheim's SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE at the small Menier Chocolate Factory fringe theatre in Southwark. This most personal of his musicals - dealing with the sacrifices an artist must make to pursue his vision - is a tricky one to pull off. It's hard to engage with the characters of Georges Seurat in the first act and his great-grandson also named George in the second while at the same time the score includes some of the loveliest music Sondheim has written. I remember being disappointed with the 1990 National Theatre's production possibly because I was so familiar with the Broadway recording with the powerhouse performances of Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. However this production by Sam Buntrock is an utter triumph again proving that the smaller you can do a Sondheim musical the more resonant the piece will be (mind you this isn't always the case, I disliked the cast-playing-instruments SWEENEY TODD earlier this year).
Daniel Evans, who seems to be getting better as he gets older, plays the two Georges very well while Anna Jane Casey is fine as Dot although her singing could do with a bit more heft. There is excellent support namely from Jan Soper as Seurat's mother, Simon Green as Jules, Seurat's more successful artist colleague and Liza Sadovy as Yvonne his wife and secret admirer of Georges. One of my favourite scenes is a small one between Yvonne and Dot in George's studio which is played very well by the two actresses. 
This evening I saw an advance screening of Woody Allen's newie MATCH POINT, not released here til January. The film, his first film shot entirely outside New York, stars Scarlett Johansson and an otherwise British cast including Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Emily Mortimer, Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton.
Needless to say, the film's plotline is played out in front of London's most glamorous locations - the characters only appear to shop in Bond Street (which might explain why they are never seen buying food), Rhys-Meyers' office is in 'The Gerkhin', the apartment Rhys-Meyers and Mortimer move into after their marriage is a huge penthouse affair with enormous windows overlooking the Thames and the cultural life of the couples is viewed at Covent Garden, Tate Modern, The Curzon Mayfair and The Palace Theatre. Indeed there are so many shots of Rhys-Meyers coming out of designer shops that I thought "Why not have him come out of Buckingham Palace and have done with it?" 
Last Thursday was RICHARD II at the Old Vic which finally saw Kevin Spacey delivering a performance worthy of that stage's history. Although not one of the most poetic of Kings - and I think some of the speechs could have done with more introspection and less tart snittiness - he really excelled in the deposition scene where his cry of anguished frustration "I have no name" was all the more powerful for seemingly coming from nowhere. He was ably supported by Ben Mles whose Bolingbroke slide smoothly into power after his exercise in regime change in a strangely Blairite manner. There was excellent support from Julian Glover as John of Gaunt as well as Oliver Cotton and Peter Eyre.
Sadly it reads and lives in the mind better than it does on stage - at 90 minutes it still seemed padded and repetitive. However it was worth seeing for the livewire performance of Scott Thomas - almost bursting out of her slinky 30s dresses with frustration of not knowing who she is. Hoskins was strangely muted as Santer but there were memorable performances by Margaret Tyzack and John Carlisle as the woman's older relatives. 
It was great to see it again and it didn't take long for the first tear to well. The Angelika is at the top of Mercer Street where the Dolls played one of their most famous gigs so it was a great place to see the film. Happy to report that Owen liked it as much as I thought he would. Eeee it's been a while since I went filums on a Sunday morning!
Art today! I had been round it on a previous visit but have not seen it since the upgrade. The building looks excellent, large galleries, wide connecting concourses with views down onto the floors below.
After that it was time to head downtown and see my friend Sam who runs the film poster gallery Posteritati. He wasn't in the gallery but he and his wee 'un Benny caught up with us at Il Palazzo in Little Italy where O and I were fit to burst from the food! After walking Sam back to the gallery we had a nice meander up through SoHo which was as busy as anywhere on a late Saturday afternoon. 
Stopping off for a wee at the Angelika Film Center we headed to Bleeker Street to visit the Biography Store, a small bookshop I always visit and usually find something to buy but not this trip dammit. HOWEVER walking up Christopher Street (my favourite street) we went into Alternate Cards and.... I now own my own RuPaul doll! She stands an Amazonian 13" tall and I may never leave the house again!
And - as if it could not get any more Out There - we saw the Christmas show at the Radio City Music Hall. O is a bit of an Xmas junkie so he was in Bliss City just looking at the marquee! 
Legs, huge sets, snow falling inside the auditorium, skaters on stage, dancers on stage, this was surely what the Follies must have been like! And if my senses hadn't reeled enough we had a re-enactment of the Nativity which outdid itself in jaw-dropping earnestness - with the help of real donkeys, sheep and 3 camels! 
We Metrocarded up to the Guggenheim which I have always wanted to see but never got round to. Typically they were renovating the front so I didn't get to see it's impressive frontage, however once inside I was thrilled by the spiralling rotunda. 
However there were paintings which drew you to them, there were some fine 'social realist' ones - depressive as Hell but at least they gave a sense of real life. Landscapes of startling clearness - almost like digital photographs and an amazing painting by Vasily Vereschagin "Defeated: Service For The Dead" of a priest and officer under a darkening sky standing in a huge churned up field that stretches off into the horizon which is filled with the bodies of hundreds of dead soldiers. 
After lunch in a crowded Madison Avenue eaterie that left me feeling more hungry after I left than when I went in, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking leisurely though a Central Park turning golden in Autumn and getting ready for the invasion of runners for the NY Marathon on the Sunday. 
What a great show - the most enjoyable one of the trip. To say it's a musical with puppets is putting at it's most basic - it's a laugh-out-loud collision between The Muppets and the best American sitcoms. The cast of seven - three actors, four puppeteers - work their arses off and the show fully deserved it's Tony Award for Best Musical - among it's hilarious songs are IF YOU WERE GAY, EVERYONE'S A LITTLE BIT RACIST, THE INTERNET IS FOR PORN - 'Grab your dick and double-click' and THE MORE YOU RUV SOMEONE (sung by the Japanese character) - hugely recommended!
This was the sunniest day so far so we took the '1' down to Battery Park so we could get the ferry to Liberty and Ellis islands. I had never felt the urge to go visit them before. I always enjoy visiting Battery Park however for one big obvious reason, it's a central location for DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN! Luckily I didn't get mugged by a murderer and bang my head, waking up to think I was a light-fingered free spirit instead of a quietly desperate New Jersey housewife... so we went to Liberty Island instead!
In the evening we went to see DOUBT at the Walter Kerr Theatre with Dezur as her birthday treat. DOUBT has been this year's must-see play of the season winning 7 Best Play awards including the Tony and Pulitzer, I must admit I had.. er.. doubts about it as I have seen previous plays of the season which weren't all that. But it was an excellent play, 90 minutes no interval. 
In the evening we went to the Minskoff Theatre to see FIDDLER ON THE ROOF starring the king and queen of Broadway gaydom Harvey Feirstein and Rosie O'Donnell. I have never seen the show before - on stage or screen - so this was a good opportunity to see it. First off I must give the thumbs up to the Minskoff's major selling point: as you go in the theatre and up an escalator you find yourself in a large foyer with a double-story block long window onto Times Square - quelle wow! We were alarmingly close to the stage - about 4 rows back so much of the choreography was lost on us. Sadly the auditorium wasn't full. 
especially when compared to the coldly calculative emotion of WICKED. David Levaux's production appears to have divided people - some critics saying it lacks the emotion of the original Jerome Robbins production while others like it's stripped-down revisionist approach. I must say the set and lighting reminded me more of a Gorky or Chekhov play and was a bit austere to frame some of the more rambuncious numbers. 
Rosie O'Donnell seemed somewhat muted in the role of Golde but then the women's roles are fairly badly-written. In the few scenes where she is called upon to express fire she sounded more Brooklyn than Anatevka but I liked her - she conveyed genuine distress at Tevye's banishment of Chava and her duet with Harvey "Do You Love Me?" showed their empathy and obvious respect for each other. So all in all, I enjoyed seeing the show. 
After the fab ascent in a glass-topped lift up the 70 floors - the lift shaft is lit up with bright colours and a film is projected on the roof as you zoom upwards - we stepped out onto the lower of it's three levels and we both were fairly gobsmacked at the amazing views the large window-enclosed terraces provide.
Great views of both uptown and downtown - and this time you get the Empire State Building in your photographs! We had to share the top level with tv crews queueing up to use Central Park as their backdrops in pieces to camera - Tim Vincent yet! - but it was a wonderful way to spend a morning!
After dinner at the Italian restaurant next door to the hotel, we went to see our first show WICKED at the Gershwin Theatre. Stephen Schwartz's score has one too many self-motivating songs likely to be covered by Celine Dion or American Idol contestants and the show seemed curiously empty despite it's bombastic score and special effects. 
The audience too were quite bizarre: the first act closer found them screaming and yelling, and their reaction at the curtain calls was like the second coming, or first going. 
