Our London mini-jaunt starts with a break in the train journey in Sheffield to get brunch at our fave cafe, Tamper. Having realised we will need to get an early evening meal in order to make our 7.30pm theatre booking we opt for a late brunch and then skip lunch as we’ll be on the train from 12-2pm, and who wants to eat train sandwiches?! With Tamper providing its usual friendly service and great food, we still have half an hour to kill before our train to London. So it’s off to the Tap for a cheeky pint. Day drinking?! We must be on holiday! We’re so engrossed in beer and chat that we almost missed our train, but leg it over the bridge just in time to pull out of the station.
We are staying at the Wellington Hotel near Victoria which we’ve stayed in before and is handy for the theatre. They upgrade us to an apartment, although I can’t see us making use of the kitchen facilities and actually we’d probably rather have been in a standard room with a view of the city than in the basement where the apartments have a restricted view of the gardens. Hey ho, we aren’t planning on spending much time in the room anyway!
We have booked Tozi for an early meal based on a positive Jay Rayner review and a good location between our hotel and the theatre. Their pre-theatre menu sounds tempting and we opt for that to give us a taste of a few different dishes. Tozi styles itself as a London take on a traditional Venetian chicchetti bar. Well, let’s just say it’s not like any chicchetti bar we went to in Venice, but the food is good all the same. There are a few mis-steps, the calamari is not as crispy as we’d like and the pizetti is topped with a strong liver sausage which personally didn’t hit the spot for me. But the breads are universally delicious with accompanying good olive oil and balsamic and the salad and pasta dishes are both winners (the former enhanced with generous rock salt seasoning and the latter still with plenty of bite). The roast chicken with rosemary roasties is delicious but I could have done with a health warning about the accompanying chilli. Thinking it more of a padron pepper I wolf down a whole chunk only for the heat to hit instantly and linger until the puddings arrive. I like a chilli hit but that was ridiculous! We raise it with the waiter who tells us the supplier sold them as medium hot. Hmmm! Fig tart with vanilla ice cream rounds both us and the meal off and really good espresso macchiato give us the fuel to counteract any post dinner lethargy. As it turns out, they’re not needed. Hamilton has more than enough about it to keep you awake after dinner! All in all Tozi is a good option for a pre-theatre meal. The staff seem very aware of the needs of that market, and, let’s face it, anyone booking a table for 6pm is likely to be in that boat. The food wasn’t universally to our tastes, but that probably says more about our preferences and the limitations of a set menu than the quality of the cooking.
Anyway, more excitingly, it was time to get settled in for Hamilton!
We had seats three rows from the front, to the right of centre. These were both comfortable (a big thumbs up from Beck who usually struggles with theatre seats from long leggedness) and gave an excellent view. So, onto our review of Hamilton….. wowowow! Will that do? No? Well, I wanted to give a standing ovation at the end of the first song, it was that good! The cast were full of energy and genuinely seemed to be having a complete ball! You really felt that Hercules, Lafayette and Alexander H would have been a riot to go drinking with – definitely the team that you want on your side in a scrape! I did find a few challenges with the production; the portrayal of Hamilton’s affair with Maria Reynolds seemed to follow the traditional trope of “woman as seductress”, but maybe that was just Hamilton trying to justify it to himself (I must listen to the soundtrack again!) To be fair, he, at least partially, redeemed himself in publishing his own confession of the affair, something which felt courageous. On a more practical level, I found the doubling up of the characters, La Fayette / Jefferson and Hercules / John Adams slightly confusing, mainly because I wanted to see more of their initial characters! Surely it would not have been hard to find different actors to play those parts? But really these were minor points in an overall show that I left wanting to see again, and that’s surely the best review! Anyone fancy another trip?!
After the triumph of Hamilton, the Stranger Things Secret Cinema experience had a lot to live up to!
For this, we had to get ourselves to Canning Town station, nearly at the end of the Circle & District tube line. It’s clear why the experience is so far from the centre of town when you see that they have recreated the whole Starcourt Mall and 4th July fun fair. We arrive and follow the signs / directions to the site along with a motley collection of 80’s dressed fellow audience members. First impressions are positive – the exterior signage of the mall has been faithfully recreated, along with Lynx shipping containers and when Billy saunters passed, the scene is truly set. Once inside our mobile phones are locked away and we are free to explore the site at our leisure. We begin with a welcome from an actor playing a former classmate of ours (the whole set up is based on the evening being a Hawkins High reunion, with different classes assigned at the time of registration – ours being the class of ’82). Each actor we meet feeds us a little information about a missing classmate and we are tasked with following the trail. We have about 3 hours to do this (as well as enjoying the mall and festivities) and at times this feels a little too long. We enjoy an ice cream at Scoops Ahoy (but bottle it after asking for only 2 samples, not quite being able to get over our British politeness to get to Erica levels of free tasting!) We also search the archaic computer archives for details of our missing classmate and end up being interviewed on Hawkins News Network in our hunt for information. And yet, and yet, the fact that other people are obviously following different story lines leads inevitably to a bit of Fear of Missing Out – that niggling feeling that other people are maybe finding hidden areas and better clues. In the games arcade one group is using a torch to find hidden messages in the graffiti, whilst others come in to Scoops Ahoy with a request to get into the staff area and are obliged. At one point we visit the fortune tellers at the fair just to see where it leads, but it’s clear that we are mixed up in a totally different storyline. It’s also obvious that other people are feeling the same when one participant asks us how we got to be interviewed by the news. Of course, the other option is just to chill out and enjoy the mall and fair for what they are. In doing this we happen upon an aerobics class which is visited by a demogorgon and a talent show hosted by science teacher Mr Clark. We chat to Steve and Dustin about their Russian recording until Robin intervenes and tells us all to stop being such dorks, and Ben relives his childhood in the amusement arcade. Then at 8.20pm we are all orchestrated to be in the central fairground area for Mayor Kline’s speech. This starts the main performance part of the experience which involves the fairground becoming part of the Upside Down, followed by about 40 minutes of live performance summarising the last three series using actors, acrobatics, lights and video extracts from the TV. We collectively help Elle regain her powers after defeating the demogorgon and slow dance at the Snow-ball. We even manage a mass karaoke of Never Ending Story, led by Dustin and Suzy. This part of the evening is nothing short of fabulous. Any minor gripes with the earlier part of the night are totally forgotten in the sheer immersion of the experience. The actors take their parts so well and the special effects are just brilliant. At the end of the live performance we are able to continue the night back at the fairground with an 80s disco. It’s been another totally brilliant evening, very different to last night, but just as satisfying!
