N and I spent Valentine's Day in London - and went and saw the play On The Waterfront at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. I must admit I have never seen the film which of course starred the legendary Marlon Brando but the play was pretty damn good. It was a fairly small cast and there were no props apart from about a dozen chairs or so. The cast were excellent and they doubled up parts by playing dockworkers and Johnny Friendly's hoods. Actually they trebled up because during one scene they played Terry Malloy's pigeons which was rather bizarre but quite effective nonetheless. The play is directed by and co-stars Steven Berkoff (he plays the bad guy - Johnny Friendly) a bloke I wouldn't want to upset as he always looks like he is about to explode in fury... I would very much recommend seeing this play!
.
Rating: 8/10
.
We were very fortunate in that we had our seats upgraded for free as the Upper Circle was closed. So we were placed in the front row of the Royal Circle (next to an annoying snobby couple who had undoubtedly paid the full price)
After the play we had to search for a restaurant... easier said than done. No problem finding plenty of restaurants - however finding one that didn't have a waiting time of an hour or more was more difficult (most restaurants were not taking advanced bookings). We were virtually on the point of giving up when we tried a Bella Italia restaurant that we had eaten in before when we saw The Mouse Trap. 30 minutes later and we were seated at a table... and thankfully we weren't going home on empty stomachs (no comments please!)
I see that arrogant sh*t Ashley Cole was arrested in the early hours for causing trouble whilst drunk. Apparently he was with John Terry and other Chelsea colleagues. If I owned Chelsea FC and was paying millions of pounds in wages to these professional footballers I really wouldn't expect them to be going out getting utterly smashed out of their brains. Footballers truly live on a different planet from the rest of us. Wouldn't you expect them to be teetotal? Are there no terms and conditions on their contracts??
