Museum, grazing and Fame

Damjan and I went to the British Museum on Saturday and also saw the musical Fame.

Damjan liked these teacups. No, we are not at Ikea — these are procelain cups from China, made hundreds of years ago!

Our London eating style is called ‘grazing’. When we see something that looks tasty, we buy a bit and eat it. Here I am at Leicester Square (‘Lester‘) eating a pork bun from nearby Chinatown.


Fame was interesting enough. It had no plot, just some shallow characterisations of about eight students going through four years of high school at the New York School of Performing Arts. Once I let go of all expectations of a plot line, I enjoyed it more. The dancing was goodish, although not of the standard you should expect from a West End production. Maybe this is what you get from performers who are musical theatre generalists, rather than dance specialists.

There were three girls in front of us who were too enthusiastic with the cheering and the dancing and the clapping. I think they knew one of the performers.

3 comments

  1. vera says:

    My cousin who is a bit of a musical fanatic claims that of all the places she’s seen musicals (including West End and Broadway), it’s in Australia that she sees them best performed.

    Her theory is that when you’re a performer on West End or Broadway or some other big musicals centre where there are so many musicals day in day out that the actors are feel like they’re just “doing their job” in the musicals machine, whereas here where it’s a bit more rare there’s a bit more passion.

    You can tell me whether you think that’s true when you get back. You can also borrow my Les Mis CD (I haven’t forgotten). 🙂

  2. joanium says:

    You’ll love this, Vera. The lead actor in the Fame production we saw was Ian Watkins from Steps. The Wikipedia article says: “As a result of his hyperactive, camp persona and seemingly limited contribution to the success of Steps, he was voted number 8 in a 2003 poll of the 100 Worst Britons.”

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