Mockingbird

Last night I went on an outing with my boss. (That's not her above.) We were at work a few days ago when one of our co-workers came in talking about the play "To Kill a Mockingbird," now on London's West End. The play is due to close pretty soon, and my boss asked me if I wanted to go. I said "Sure!"

So she got tickets and we went last night. We started first in Chinatown, where we had dinner. That's where this character (above) was wandering around. I had to snap a picture furtively because I didn't have any coins to put in his or her bucket.

The play is written by Aaron Sorkin of "West Wing" fame, and has a different cast from when it opened more than a year ago. Matthew Modine now plays Atticus, and he did a great job. The other actors were good but I detected more than a few British accents among the performers. They don't sound like any Alabamians I know. The sets were beautiful.

The play reimagines, or rather expands on, some of the characters in the book. Calpurnia and Dill both have more significant roles -- we even get a last-minute hint that Dill has a crush on Jem -- while Scout seems less central. Apparently Sorkin sought to treat Atticus less as the saintly figure he had become in modern culture and more as the conflicted southerner depicted in Harper Lee's more recently released "Mockingbird" novel, "Go Set a Watchman." But he's still largely the dignified Atticus.

Afterwards my boss caught the tube at Piccadilly Circus, and I kept walking down Piccadilly to Green Park, where I caught the Jubilee Line home. I was glad I did so I could see the gigantic peacock on the front of Fortnum & Mason.

Oh, and do we now have an extractor fan in our bathroom? No, we do not. I'm not sure what happened yesterday with the contractors who planned to install it, but there was no sign anyone had been here when Dave got home. Plus ça change, as the French say.

That doesn't mean we had peace & quiet around here, though, because...the Russians!