Day one, in which I delight in an afternoon of theatrics

I indulged myself today. I promised myself earlier that I wasn't going to waste another holiday weekend, and to make sure I stuck to that promise I put together a brief itinerary of things I intended to accomplish. One of those items was to go to the theatre. I made a concious decision not to decide what I wanted to see and instead turned up this afternoon at the half price ticket booth in Leicester Square to see what fate had in store. As it turned out, there were several plays that appealed to me: Oleanna, by David Mamet (primarily because I once caught the tail end of the filmed version on tv once and it seemed quite intruiging), The Woman In Black (a supposedly spine-chilling thriller which has been around a good many years now), and Democracy, the most recent play by Michael "Noises Off" Frayn. I flipped a mental coin and it landed on the side of Democracy so off I went.

I didn't know much about Democracy going in, save that it dealt with a period of German politics in the early seventies and the rise - and subsequent fall - of both Willy Brandt, the first left leaning Chancellor for forty years, and his personal assisant, Günter Guillaume, who was also notable for being an East German spy. As you might guess from that description, it was far removed from the riotous comedy of Noises Off, but held my attention none-the-less. Perhaps what I found most interesting was discovering a period of political history about which I knew extremely little. Although the play is primarily concerned the characters rather than the politics of the time, the background remains fascinating. For example, it's made clear that Brandt's chancellership was vital in setting the stage for eventual re-unification of Germany some two decades later.

Frayn is a clever stagesmith who makes good use of the possibilities of the medium. Günter's character is our primary focus and serves as a narrator of sorts, constantly switching his attention between the machiavellian goings on in the party office and offering his interpretations of events to his East German handler. More so than Brandt, he's the most complex character, since it's clear that although he's a spy, he's still desperate to please both his masters, and by the end even he no longer seems sure where his true loyalties lie. It's a worthy sort of a play, but worthwhile too.

Following that I treated myself to ice-cream, which is a rarity for me. Whilst it's something I enjoy, I never buy ice-cream for myself when I'm alone - almost without fail it's a treat I save for company - but today the lure of Hagan Daz praline and cream was nigh irresistable and I cracked like a plummeting egg upon a paving stone. And it was good. And then I toddled off to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the latest film from scribe Charlie Kaufman who was also responsible for the astonishly inventive Being John Malkovitch and Adaptation. Etheral Sunshine (as was curiously printed on my cinema ticket) is no less avant-garde - it's a strange, sad sort of film. I should have a lot more to say on it, but it's late now, so I'll leave it for another time, if at all. I liked it a lot though - even if some of it struck a little close to home.

Today was good day. I did things I don't normally do on an ordinary Saturday and it made for a refreshing change. I should do it more often.