Europe 08 Paris Day 3

On Thursday i had watched Phil and Bev navigate around Paris using the Metro (underground railway). Today we decided to attempt the feat ourselves and visit a number of landmarks via the metro.

You can follow the route on the partial map of the metro below:


There was a metro station near our hotel - Champs de Mars Tour Eiffel, on the C line. It is located in the bottom left of the map. We made our way there and fairly quickly worked out how to buy tickets from the vending machine. Our first destination was Place de la Concorde. We looked at the signs to determine which platform to use. Within five minutes a train arrived and we traveled two stations to Invalides. There we swapped to line 8, coloured mauve and went one station to Concorde. When we walked up the exit stairs I expected to be in Place de la Concorde and it was gratifying to discover that my navigation had worked and the grand panorama of the square opened up.

The Wikipedia article linked to above states the following about the square:

The Place was designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel in 1755 as a moat-skirted octagon between the Champs-Élysées to the west and the Tuileries Gardens to the east. Filled with statues and fountains, the area was named Place Louis XV to honor the then king.

During the French Revolution the statue of King Louis was torn down and the area renamed "Place de la Révolution". In a grim reminder to the nobility of a gruesome past, when the "Place de Grève" was a site where the nobility and members of the bourgeoisie were entertained watching convicted criminals being dismembered alive, the new revolutionary government erected the guillotine there. The first notable to be executed at the Place de la Révolution was King Louis XVI, on January 21, 1793. Other important people guillotined there, often in front of cheering crowds, were Queen Marie Antoinette, Madame Élisabeth, Charlotte Corday, Madame du Barry, Danton, Desmoulins, Lavoisier, Robespierre and Louis de Saint-Just.

The Directory, the government that followed Robespierre's, changed the name to the current one as a gesture of reconciliation.

The centre of the square is occupied by a giant Egyptian obelisk decorated with hieroglyphics exalting the reign of the pharaoh Ramses II. The obelisk once marked the entrance to the Luxor Temple. The viceroy of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, offered the 3,300-year-old Luxor Obelisk to France in 1831. The obelisk arrived in Paris on December 21, 1833. The red granite column is 23 metres (75 ft) high, including the base, and weighs over 250 metric tonnes. The original cap is missing, believed stolen in the 6th century BC. the government of France added a gold-leafed pyramid cap to the top of the obelisk in 1998.

It was interesting to walk around this square, taking photographs and thinking about its history.

We walked to the nearby Le Madeleine past many up market jewelery shops including Cartier then returned to the metro. We found line 1 which in this section follows the Champs Elysees and exited at Charles de Gaule Etoile station. As expected as we exited the station the Arc de Triumph towered before us in the middle of its large roundabout. I wanted to return to the Arch to climb to the top. Margaret was happy to sit and watch the frenetic Parisian traffic negotiate the roundabout - there are about a dozen roads entering and leaving it causing the most chaotic traffic we were to see until Istanbul.

I did not want to negotiate the traffic as some crazy teenagers were doing, so I went looking for the underpass. It was fairly difficult to find, but eventually I found myself under the arch. It was necessary to buy tickets to climb to the top and there was a fairly long line so after looking around for a while I returned to find Margaret. When I reached the location where I thought I had left her she was not there! I realised that I should have taken a bearing on the Arch when I left her as most of the intersections looked alike. Eventually I found her after crossing a few more streets.

The last location I wished to visit that day was Musee D'Orsay the gallery of modern art. We returned to Concorde station the way we had come; changed lines to line 8 and traveled to Invalides; changed again to the C line and exited the system at Musee D'Orsay station.

Before we entered the gallery we ate some lunch - that consisted of rolls and fruit that Margaret had "stolen" at breakfast time. In the gallery I saw many familiar works by: Manet, Monet, Pissaro, Cezanne, van Gogh, Renoir, Gauguin and Rodin's sculpture of Balzac.

We then returned to the hotel by way of the C line.

This trip was still something of a reconnaissance for our next trip to Paris. On that visit I want to spend a day at the Louvre, another at Versailles and also travel into the country side to Villers-Bretonneux. The first two are obvious enough as we did not have enough time at the Louvre and have not seen Versailles at all. The reason for Villers-Bretonneux is given in this post.

On the way back to the hotel I noticed that Versailles could be reached via the C line, but that only some trains went there, as the line divides soon after Champs de Mars Tour Eiffel. This is the sort of information that will allow us to plan our own visit to Paris in the future.

That evening we attended another additional excursion to the Paradis Latin Cabaret which is in the Latin Quarter of Paris. I had thought that the Latin Quarter referred to the ethnic mix of the are - i.e. Latins, or southerners lived there, giving it a bohemian character. The tour guide explained that it refers to the language Latin. It is the education quarter - the Sorbonne and other schools are there. The scholarly quarter. Of cause we didn't expect that Paradis Latin would be an intellectual experience, but it was a lot of fun, with song, dance and a great aerial, trapeze act involving precision and stupendous strength. It was hardly a surprise that the show was much better than the food.

It was a great way to finish off our visit to Paris.

Europe 08 Paris Day 2

The cost of the the tour of Europe includes many city tours.

This morning we took the included Paris city tour. As in all of the city tours a group of local guides were provided. We traveled around Paris with the blue bus group and guide. We saw many of the major sights of Paris and our guide filled us in on the history of Paris and of the major landmarks. As the Tour Eiffel was near our hotel we drove past it first. We drove the full length of the Champs Elysees (from Place de la Concorde to Arc de Triumph), and also saw: Hotel des Invilides, Madelaine, L'Opera, Louvre, Musee D'Orsee, and Notre Dame. We alighted the bus at Notre Dame and went of a walking tour around the Cathedral and then went inside. We came across more gypsy scammers, and this is where I finally tired of them and swore at one of them.

The facade of Notre Dame is world famous, but I find the view from the back even more interesting. I remember in school art classes studying Gothic architecture. The architects attempted to build high walls with plenty of glass, but such constructions (before the age of steel) required buttressing from outside. Notre Dame has buttresses that support the wall half way up and others that "fly" near to the top. They are called flying buttresses, and to my eye look surprisingly modern. They can be seen in the photo below. The last time that we were in Paris the read portion of the cathedral was covered in scaffolding, so I was pleased to get an unobstructed view this time.


After about an hour we returned to the bus and continued the tour. Margaret and I left the bus at Place de la Trocedoro. We had a pleasant lunch at a restaurant called La Malakoff watching people walking around the square and the traffic negotiating the roundabout.

The square makes an excellent vantage point to view the Eiffel Tower. We walked home via the Tower. In the afternoon we had a rest in preparation for our evening tour to Monmatre. It is possible that we needed a rest as jet lag was at last kicking in.

The Monmatre tour was one of the additional ones that cost extra, but it was well worth the money.

We were bussed to Monmatre, on its hill in Northern Paris. On the way we passed the famous Moulin Rouge. Busses can't drive up the narrow Monmatre streets so we took a "train" somewhat reminiscent of the "trains" that take kids for rides in shopping centres.

Montmartre has been known for its many artists since 1880. Until 1873, when the Sacré-Coeur was built on top of the hill, Montmartre was a small village, inhabited by a mostly farming community. It still retains a village like atmosphere, with many restaurants, shops and artists ready to draw eager tourists - for a price.

We followed the guide as she took us on a walking tour of the narrow cobbled streets. The highlight, of cause, was the basilica. I had seen many photos and drawings of it but was not prepared for its grandeur, "in real life". The cupola is 83 metres high, and its position on the Monmatre hill makes it even more spectacular. It is a mix of styles generally described as Roman - Byzantine.

The reasons for the building of Sacre Coeur are somewhat controversial. Although the idea had been around for some time in ultra-Catholic and royalist circles it gained considerable ground after the disaster of the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune. An article in Wikipedia notes:

Though today it is asserted to be dedicated in honor of the 58,000 who lost their lives during the war, the decree of the Assemblée nationale, 24 July 1873, responding to a request by the archbishop of Paris by voting its construction, specifies that it is to "expiate the crimes of the communards"[2]. Montmartre had been the site of the Commune's first insurrection, and many hard-core communards were forever entombed in the subterranean galleries of former gypsum mines where they had retreated, by explosives detonated at the entrances by the Army of Versailles. Hostages had been executed on both sides, and the Communards had executed Georges Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, who became a martyr for the resurgent Catholic Church. His successor Guibert, climbing the Butte Montmartre in October 1872, was reported to have had a vision, as clouds dispersed over the panorama: "It is here, it is here where the martyrs are,[3] it is here that the Sacred Heart must reign so that it can beckon all to come".[4]

The Monmatre hill was a difficult location to build such a large construction and it was not completed until 1914, and not consecrated until 1919 after the war. By then a much larger disaster had occurred so the original reasons for building it were not particularly important.

After dinner in a creperie we returned to the front of the basilica. There were many people sitting on the steps, listening to a guitarist, as can be seen in the photograph below. Margaret stayed there while I reentered the basilica.



I returned to Sacre Coeur because of the awesome beauty of the interior. In yesterday's post I made comment in relation to the Louvre that architecture should be judged by its utility and beauty both inside and outside. Although I was aware of the beauty of Sacre Coeur exterior I was unprepared for its overwhelming interior. It is a very large open space with a huge mural on the cupola. The taking of photographs inside was not allowed. I found the photo below after an extensive Internet search. It gives some sense of the interior but falls far short of its breathtaking size and awe inspiring atmosphere.



One of the issues that would recur during the following month was the "meeting point" and time for leaving. The second reason that we returned to the basilica was that it was near the meeting point. We didn't want to be late.

We returned to the lower areas of Monmatre via a funicular railway, and walked back to the bus past many brightly lit shop windows.

We returned to the Hotel by a circuitous route taking many of the major sights under floodlight.

Europe 08 Paris Day 1

We had stayed up as late as possible our first night in Paris, so we were extremely tired when we went to bed and slept fairly well.

The next morning we felt reasonably rested and not particularly jet lagged.

I went down to the foyer to have a look around before we left for the Tower. In the foyer I found the table with our Tour Director waiting to meet her travelers. Her name was Lilo. I introduced myself and Lilo explained that the 150 passengers were to be divided up into four groups; blue red green and yellow for purposes of touring Paris and for the Sunday trip to the boat. I opted for blue group, and noticed that we were the second couple to meet Lilo. She gave me the itinerary for Paris. There was a tour that was included in the price of the trip and some extras that required more payment.

We met Phil, Bev and the kids at the Eiffel Tower morning. As we stood in line we were asked innumerable times to buy miniature Eiffel Towers. Marg bought a few for the children. The sellers were mainly from North Africa, probably Algerians. There were so many of them that it was difficult to see how they could earn any money. I had a chance to test my relaxed frame of mind resolution. We arrived at the Tower earlier than Phil, so we stood in line and bought tickets for us all. I was concerned that Phil would not be able to find us when we had bought the tickets as there are four entrances. Naturally he arrived in the nick of time and found us.

We traveled to the top floor. This is done via two lifts. The first lift takes passengers to the first or second floors. On the second floor, which is fairly high up already, we changed to the lift for the top floor. Even though we were at the Tower early, there was still a necessity to stand in lines. Later in the day the lines become enormous.

The views from the top were spectacular. Clearly visible were: our hotel, Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame, Hotel des Invilides, Monmatre and Sacre Coeur on a hill to the north, Ecole Militaire, Champs de Mars and the skyscrapers of the financial district.

	Margaret and Hayley on the second floor
Margaret, Beverley, Philip, Hayley, Jack (Bev's youngest) and Jeremy
	Paris from the tower, Monmatre in the background (with the glorious Sacre Coeur)
Margaret and Beverley chat near the tower

As the lifts were busy we all walked down from the second floor at least some of the way. Some of us paid with sore legs next day.

We had lunch at the Carousel between the tower and the river. There we came across our first gypsy scam artists. Some gypsy women asked if we could speak English. Margaret said that she could and the girl gave her a note with a spectacular sob story and asked for money. We were regularly pestered by girls using the same scam all day. Later I got so exasperated that I swore at one of them.

On the way to the Metro we came across another scam attempt. A man walked past us and dropped a ring behind Philip. He turned around and offered the ring to Phil and started to walk away. Then he came back and asked for money. Phil got into a fairly heated argument, and eventually gave the ring back and told the scammer to nick off.

We went to the Louver via Metro. I watched how Phil and Bev navigated around and stored away the information for later on.

We left a metro station and walked past a few shops and restaurants to the entrance to the Louver. We walked along a wide passage with shops and eateries, and miraculously came out under "the pyramid". I had previously only seen the pyramid from outside. I thought its modernism clashed with the classical architecture of the Louvre itself. This was, though, a completely different view. It worked wonderfully well from inside (or underneath) as a huge skylight. Conclusion: don't judge architecture until you have seen it from inside as well as outside.

The artwork in the Louvre is not only hanging on the walls and free standing as sculpture. The building itself was an artwork, particularly the murals on the ceilings. We did not spend much time in the Louvre ...

... but on the way to finding the Mona Lisa we came across Bernardino Luini's Salome Receiving the Head of John the Baptist. Philip read the details while Jeremy looked at the picture ... amazed.

The next time we go to Paris I plan to spend a day at the Louvre, after carrying out some comprehensive research beforehand.

We returned to Philip and Bev's room in the Marriot hotel on the Champs Elysees. Very swish! We relaxed in the room for a while then Philip and I went for a walk along the Champs Elysees. Although the street is the height of chic and style with many very famous brands represented there we found a department store come super market (called Monoprix) close to the hotel. We bought a few provisions there.

We went for dinner to a nearby restaurant. There were eight of us. Like many Parisian restaurants it was arranged for couples with tables for two sprinkled about the room. I decided to test my schoolboy French and said to the waiter "table pour huit". I realised that I had successfully conveyed my message as the waiter went off and put four of the tables together. We ate a convivial meal of pasta or pizza.

Later that evening we walked back to the Eiffel Tower to see the evening light show. The tower is floodlit at night and for the first three or four hours after dark a glittering light show occurs for ten minutes. After the show we said goodbye to Phil, Bev and the kids and returned to our hotel room.

The tower floodlit at night

Europe08 Flying to Europe

We now live much further from the Airport. Michelle took us to the airport. We eventually took off at 10:10 pm about half an hour late. My watch has duel times so I set the second time to France's time. (Actually I set it to England's time not realising that even though Paris and London have virtually the same longitude France uses European Central Time rather than GMT so there is an hour difference.)


Philip (Calder) had advised me to move my activities to the time of my destination as soon as I entered the plane, to minimise jetlag at the other end. Given that I find it difficult to sleep on a plane for more than a few minutes at a time, it changing to Paris time probably didn't make much difference.

I read Misha Glenny's masterful book The Balkans and when I became too tired to read (but not enough to sleep properly) I switched to playing solitaire on the personal monitor. (For those who haven't been on an international flight recently, each passenger has a video monitor with a wide range of entertainment features.) I also kept a check on our progress using the Airshow feature of the monitor. Margaret watched three movies: The Bucket List, Bonnie and Clyde and The Bourne Identity.

We arrived in Dubai at 5:30 am local time, after a 13 hour trip. The plane has two cameras that can be accessed by passengers - one pointing to the front one looking down. I watched the landing from the front pointing camera. The lights of the ariport could be seen from a long way out. Dubai airport is being upgraded so our plane didn't stop at an air bridge, instead it parked way out in the boondocks and we took a shuttle bus to the terminal. Although it was very early in the morning it was already very hot.

Airline food literally "gives me the shits" so I had to find a toilet quickly. I apparently wasn't the only one in a hurry and I had to wait in line, getting some sense of a regular problem for women. When I got to the cubicle it was a squat down one!

Dubai airport - home of Emirates - is very large. Our flight was from gate 38 which we found quite easily. The 2.5 hour wait passed fairly quickly.

One trap in flying is excessive meals. This morning we were offered two breakfasts. The first on the flight from Melbourne to Dubai before landing at Dubai; the second soon after we took off from Dubai (on the way to Paris). I declined the second one. I thought of Hobbits who have who routinely have two breakfasts.

The flight to Paris took 6 hours. When we arrived at Paris we had to find passport control and luggage pickup (an easy task just follow the other passengers). After that we had to find where to meet our Airport / Hotel Transit driver and find that location. During our last international trip, I damaged the experience for both of us by panicking and stressing too much. Before we left I made a resolution to be relaxed and take it "one issue at a time", as I was sure that we could resolve any problem that arose. Here was my chance to put that resolution into practice. After we retreived our luggage we found a phone and rang the Transit company. We were told to wait outside exit number 8. We found the exit easily where we come across some people who were doing a mild stress about their transit. I decided that if the transit did not arrive we could easily catch a taxi, so there was no need to worry. After about 20 minutes our transit arrived. We were taken to our hotel by a round about route, taking other transit customers to their hotels.

We arrived a day early, as the air fare was cheaper, so I had booked a room at the hotel on the Internet last year. At home I had been stressing about the booking - "what if we arrived at the hotel and the booking had not worked?" When we arrived at the hotel, in my new relaxed frame of mind I was confident that the hotel book in would work well, and of cause it did.

The Hilton in Paris is quite an old hotel. It was state of the art when it was built, 40 years ago, and was still acceptable, though not as flash as some others we have stayed in.

Philip, Bev and the kids came around at 7:00 pm and we went to a local restaurant for dinner. We found a waiter in the restaurant who could speak English so the ordering went without a problem. We then walked around to the Eiffel Tower, less than a block away, and made plans to meet there the next morning. We then returned to our respective hotel rooms.

Flamenco Fire

Yesterday we saw Flamenco Fire at Wyndham Cultural Centre.
The show and company is described on their website as:

Since 1999 Flamenco Fire has been thrilling audiences with a heady mix of traditional and contemporary flamenco music, dance and song. A collaboration of nine of Australia’s finest flamenco artists, it features singers, dancers and musicians in a beautifully crafted show that reveals the flamenco artform in all of its guises.

We generally enjoyed the show, but not being an aficionado of Flamenco I can't comment on the finer points of the production.

The dancing and guitar playing was wonderful, but the singing was too eastern for me to fully enjoy.

The show raised the issue of the history and culture of Spain. Although it is geographically part of Western Europe, it has significant eastern influences in its culture which is worth investigating at a later date.

Europe Trip

We start our Europe trip next Tuesday, 27th May, flying out from Tulla at 9:30 pm.

After a stopover at Dubai, we arrive in Paris at 1:30 pm Wednesday (Paris time) which is 3:30 am Thursday Melbourne time.

In Paris we will meet Philip, Hayley and Jeremy as well as Philip's friend Beverley and her two boys George and Jack.

We will have 3¹/₂ days in Paris before taking a bus to Trier, via Luxembourg. In Trier we will board a boat and cruise to Bulgaria via the following waterways: Moselle River, Rhine River, Main River, Main-Danube Canal and Danube River.

The map below shows the route we will take. Click on it and a larger and clearer version will appear in a new page or tab. (Ignore the planes, we start at Paris and end at Istanbul.)



The photo shows our ship. We will have one of the cabins in the upper deck.


Click on this link to see our itinerary. Day 1 is Thursday May 29^th.

While we are away I will be using my the GMAIL account: stespe1@gmail.com.

Newish version of an old joke

There are all sorts of versions of this joke, but I LOLed when I read it on Pavlov's Cat blog.

A farmer is attending to a mob of sheep in a remote paddock when suddenly a brand-new BMW advances out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Broni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie leans out the window and says "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have here, will you give me one?"

The farmer looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing mob and calmly answers, "Sure. Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his AT&T cell phone, surfs to a NASA page on the internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulas. He uploads all of this data via an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the farmer and says, "You have exactly 1586 sheep."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my sheep," says the farmer. He watches the yuppie select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the farmer says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a consultant," says the farmer.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required," answered the farmer. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew to a question that I hadn't asked; and you know absolutely nothing about my business. Now give me back my dog."

New House

Well we have finally settled into our new house

Click on the photo below to see the full photographic set.

House

Here is a slide show of the pictures:




Our details are:
Address: 54/250 Thames Blvd Tarneit, 3029
Phone: 87342354
Mobile: 0412212755
Email: stespe@premiertarneit.co.au or stespe1@gmail.com

The 39 Steps

One of the great joys of theatre is the wonderful piece that comes out of nowhere. Occasionally we have been to shows that we know little or nothing about and consequently have few expectations, and leave the theatre blown away by the magic, power, beauty or cleverness of the performance. One such was event was Silvia a play that we saw many years ago. It featured Australia's best actor, Rachel Griffiths, who came on to the stage looking quite scruffy. It took me a few minutes to realise that she was playing a stray dog that her new owner had found in the local park. The memorable feature of the play was Griffith's virtuoso performance. Another example of the "great play out of nowhere" was the last one we saw, Holding the Man, see my review here.

Another category is the performance that is well known and for which you have great expectations. (My most memorable example of this it the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I have been a Tolkein fan for decades so walking into The Fellowship of the Ring was a nervous experience - what if they didn't pull it off? I had a similar uneasy experience waling into the theatre for The 39 Steps as I knew that the show had to potential for great entertainment, but also for a real dog's dinner.

I had been aware for some time that the show was based on Hitchcock's 1935 film - with a twist. To realistically portray the film a large cast with many different sets, theatrical effects and costumes are required. A comical take though only requires four actors a few props and "plenty of barefaced cheek". We prepared more carefully for this play that was usual. A week or so before the performance we watched the Hitchcock film. The anticipation of the play made the (silly) 1935 melodrama more interesting as we considered how it was possible to perform the various scenes with only four actors. One particularly intriguing example was the marching band scene.


The director Maria Aitken said that imagining the following back story for the production assisted her in the direction:

... the notion that it is being staged by "a tatty theatre company with a leading man who is determined to play Richard Hannay, but thinks himself much too grand to push the furniture around and a leading lady who's "prepared" to accommodate him by taking all the female roles, and do a little bit of the furniture moving. Rounding out the company are two old-school vaudevillians, determined, in their minds, "to save the play", but sometimes, in their zeal, "inclined to go too far and spoil it".

The hero Richard Hannay is played by Marcus Graham - laconic and affable, with only a touch of the stiff upper lip. Helen Christinson plays the three women in his life - Pamela, Annabella and Margaret - the dark vamp, the cool blonde and the innocent country girl. She moves fluently and convincingly between roles.

Graham and Christinson as Hannay and Annabella

The hundred or so other roles are played by Grant Piro and Tony Taylor. Often they play two or three characters simultaneously, with just a change of hat, accent and facial expression. Sometimes these character changes can be extremely deft requiring brilliant timing. For instance, there is a scene in the hotel in Scotland where hotel manager is about to tell one of the spies about the two heroes in the upstairs room, when his wife comes in to save the day (in the name of romance). This requires three actors on the stage at once, husband, wife and spy, but there are only two actors available to do it. The scene starts with the husband behind the hotel desk talking to the spy. Then the "husband" actor ducks down behind the desk and reappears as the wife (in nightdress) and heads off the spy's questions. The spy actor then leaves the stage and reappears as the husband kilt and all. Another example is in Mr Memory's death scene at the end. Five actors are required, Pamela, Hannay, Mr Memory, the MC and the police inspector. This problem is solved by Taylor playing the MC and policeman at once. He is wearing the MC's dinner jacket but has the policeman's trench coat on his right arm and shoulder. He turns in the appropriate direction, to display the appropriate costume, when playing each part.

Naturally there are many Hitchcock references. The chase across the moor scene is presented as shadow play. It is, of cause, played in exaggerated style when two bi-planes join the search, only to crash. Watching the events from a nearby hill is a little fat Hitchcock figure.

We left this play realising that we had seen another seasonal highlight, along with
Holding the Man and The Season in Sarsparilla.