Warsaw, Poland: Beautiful and Welcoming City with a Tragic Pastby Randi / June 12, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about “The Rink”, at the Southwark Playhouse until June 23.
Confirming our long-held belief that the best of London musical theatre happens at Southwark Playhouse, their latest production of “The Rink” is a flawless gem. The 10th venture from theatre gods Kander & Ebb, “The Rink” tells the story of Anna, an Italian-American woman with an estranged daughter, who owns a rundown roller-skating rink on the boardwalk by a changing-for-the-worse seaside. The original 1984 production starred Chita Rivera and Liza Minnelli as the mother and daughter, so if you were alive to witness that you probably died from the experience. It won Chita the Tony, yet was poorly received by critics, especially sourpuss Frank Rich at the failing New York Times. (Fun fact: Director Rob Marshall was a performer in that production.) I can’t imagine how different that production had to have been from the brilliance that’s occurring at the Southwark Playhouse right now, because it may be the best musical production on a London stage right now and I know I can’t compare myself to the New York Times (I don’t support Nazis, for one), this shit’s gonna be a rave.
“The Rink” introduces us to Anna Antonelli as she greets a crew of worker men at her skating rink. They are ready to clear out all the junk and demolish the property so she can sell it and move away from it and move on with her life. Anna wants to get rid of every single thing in the many boxes, like she wants to clear this clutter from her life and clear all the memories from her mind. But her estranged daughter Angel arrives to stop her mother from selling, saying that it’s theirs, not hers, even though she hasn’t been home or seen her mother for the better part of a decade. Naturally, the surprise reunion brings a lot of emotions and repressed memories to the surface as the two women deal with their relationship and all they’ve been through.
A lot of the credit for how winning this production is goes to the star, Caroline O’Connor, who was last seen on Broadway in “Anastasia” hamming it up as the kooky assistant to the queen or whatever grandmama Romanov is. I only know O’Connor as a performer in America, but she’s English and built up a career in Australia first. Incredibly, she understudied the role of Angel, the daughter, in the first London production of “The Rink” in the ‘80s, which helps explain how she seems to understand every nuance of this role and show and sell it so completely. From the very first number, “Chief Cook and Bottle Washer” (which I didn’t know was from this so I got excited when I recognized it), she cements herself as a comedic force to be reckoned with, with impeccable timing. It helps that that song is a fantastic way to introduce a funny yet short-tempered woman right off the bat. Kander & Ebb really know what they’re doing.
The opening triumph of “Bottle Washer” is solidified with electrifying performances of song after song that quickly draw you into the show’s drama while making you laugh constantly. The mother-daughter dynamic between Anna and her daughter Angel, played by a fantastic Gemma Sutton, feels so real that you believe it so fully, all their bickering about superficial things and all their struggles to understand each other over the more important issues, all happening as Angel tries to stop her mother from throwing their memories out with their possessions. It’s one of the first times I noticed in a musical that the acting was stronger than the singing. And the singing was pretty good.
What takes this production to new heights is the subtle direction from Adam Lenson, who creates emotional moments that devastate amid the comical parts. The main conceit is that the ensemble members playing the worker crew slide seamlessly between their present day characters and figures from the women’s past, all signified by a change in the lighting or the music. In one of the most superb scenes, Stewart Clarke’s workman would dig into an unmarked box, pull out a blue crystal goblet and ask Anna “what’s this?” and in an instant he would be Anna’s ex-husband Dino giving Anna these goblets for their anniversary. The movement in and out of present and past is impeccably done, and it allows for the high comedy to give way effortlessly to poignant drama. As the show progresses, we see more and more of the past as we are given the opportunity to piece together what happened to drive these two women apart. We see that Dino becomes violent and unstable after he comes back from the war, yet with the same disdain for family life. We see Anna neglect her daughter in an attempt to prove her own desirability, yet risk everything to shield her daughter from the ugly truth.
The flashbacks also describe what happened to this town to leave the rink in such a shambles. A standout ensemble member, Ross Dawes, morphed into one of Anna’s older lady friends with a scarf around his head, as he and the other ‘ladies’ bemoaned the state of things, with hooligans coming in and taking over with their violence and loud music. The guys were really funny in these scenes, so you weren’t prepared for these sweet old ladies’ attempts at standing their ground in front of these thugs to end in serious violence, for Anna too. Everything we see explains and supports her decision to sell and get the hell out of there and not take anything with her, yet everything we see from Angel’s past defends her desire to stay and bring back some of that magic she used to feel as a kid at the rink. She sings often of the colored lights she remembers shining here, and you can’t fault her for wanting to recapture some of the only happiness she’s felt in her life. For a show about whether or not to sell an old roller skating rink, this musical is exceptionally compelling and moving.
Despite the end of the first act dragging a little, there were no bits that I would cut (and that’s saying something because I always want to make cuts), thanks to Kander & Ebb’s great score and Terrence McNally’s strong book. All of it informed the central conflict or reminded the ladies of the good times they had here, like the flashback that included the number we all were waiting for – the dance on roller skates that brought the house down. It was like they were tap dancing, but just happened to be wearing roller skates. This amazing, joyous memory was one that the girls would surely both want to keep, and one of the many in this show that audiences will treasure.
INFORMATION
“The Rink” is playing at Southwark Theatre until June 23, and tickets are only $25 (remember that is in pounddollars). If there’s any justice, it should transfer to the West End, although this tiny theatre is an advantage for this show.
STAGE DOOR
The situation at the Southwark is unique, because the building is just a cramped lobby-bar and then a hallway leading to the auditorium. There’s no stage door, and everyone – audience, cast, crew, bartenders – quickly ends up crammed together in this room. Whether you want to meet an actor or not, you’ll end up bumping into them as you come out of the bathroom or wait for a drink. It usually is great because it’s not awkward like it is at stage door; you’re all just occupying this same space and it would be weirder for you not to acknowledge that the actor you’re trying to pass did a great job. However, this was my first bad experience with this set-up. Most of the cast was super friendly and eager to chat, including Gemma and all of the men. But when I and a few other fans (not with me) tried to talk to Caroline, she ignored us. Now, I am the first person to remind fans that no actor ever has to stage door, and whether they decide to or not is completely up to them and they should not be judged on it. But when you are just in a tiny bar talking to people, it is not a good look for you to ignore people who are literally next to you. Caroline spoke with a few guys who knew someone who knew her for a good 20 minutes as we stood there just trying to say hello and great job, and when they mentioned that they would let her get to her other fans (gee thanks), she turned and went to someone that she knew. Despite standing next to her for more than a half hour, she never looked at me or the other girls I was standing with. It’s one thing to not do the whole stage door thing, but to ignore people who are literally next to you, waiting to talk to you just at a bar takes nerve. It kind of broke my heart because I wanted to tell her how amazing her performance was, sure, but also do you know how long I’ve been waiting to meet Nini Legs in the Air? YES THAT WAS HER. Ugh. Anyway. That’s my story. At least the following week Renee Fleming gave me a hug so you know, that’s much better especially since that’s the person who you’d understand being ‘above meeting fans’ yet wasn’t in the least.
A lot of the credit for how winning this production is goes to the star, Caroline O’Connor, who was last seen on Broadway in “Anastasia” hamming it up as the kooky assistant to the queen or whatever grandmama Romanov is. I only know O’Connor as a performer in America, but she’s English and built up a career in Australia first. Incredibly, she understudied the role of Angel, the daughter, in the first London production of “The Rink” in the ‘80s, which helps explain how she seems to understand every nuance of this role and show and sell it so completely. From the very first number, “Chief Cook and Bottle Washer” (which I didn’t know was from this so I got excited when I recognized it), she cements herself as a comedic force to be reckoned with, with impeccable timing. It helps that that song is a fantastic way to introduce a funny yet short-tempered woman right off the bat. Kander & Ebb really know what they’re doing.
The opening triumph of “Bottle Washer” is solidified with electrifying performances of song after song that quickly draw you into the show’s drama while making you laugh constantly. The mother-daughter dynamic between Anna and her daughter Angel, played by a fantastic Gemma Sutton, feels so real that you believe it so fully, all their bickering about superficial things and all their struggles to understand each other over the more important issues, all happening as Angel tries to stop her mother from throwing their memories out with their possessions. It’s one of the first times I noticed in a musical that the acting was stronger than the singing. And the singing was pretty good.
What takes this production to new heights is the subtle direction from Adam Lenson, who creates emotional moments that devastate amid the comical parts. The main conceit is that the ensemble members playing the worker crew slide seamlessly between their present day characters and figures from the women’s past, all signified by a change in the lighting or the music. In one of the most superb scenes, Stewart Clarke’s workman would dig into an unmarked box, pull out a blue crystal goblet and ask Anna “what’s this?” and in an instant he would be Anna’s ex-husband Dino giving Anna these goblets for their anniversary. The movement in and out of present and past is impeccably done, and it allows for the high comedy to give way effortlessly to poignant drama. As the show progresses, we see more and more of the past as we are given the opportunity to piece together what happened to drive these two women apart. We see that Dino becomes violent and unstable after he comes back from the war, yet with the same disdain for family life. We see Anna neglect her daughter in an attempt to prove her own desirability, yet risk everything to shield her daughter from the ugly truth.
The flashbacks also describe what happened to this town to leave the rink in such a shambles. A standout ensemble member, Ross Dawes, morphed into one of Anna’s older lady friends with a scarf around his head, as he and the other ‘ladies’ bemoaned the state of things, with hooligans coming in and taking over with their violence and loud music. The guys were really funny in these scenes, so you weren’t prepared for these sweet old ladies’ attempts at standing their ground in front of these thugs to end in serious violence, for Anna too. Everything we see explains and supports her decision to sell and get the hell out of there and not take anything with her, yet everything we see from Angel’s past defends her desire to stay and bring back some of that magic she used to feel as a kid at the rink. She sings often of the colored lights she remembers shining here, and you can’t fault her for wanting to recapture some of the only happiness she’s felt in her life. For a show about whether or not to sell an old roller skating rink, this musical is exceptionally compelling and moving.
Despite the end of the first act dragging a little, there were no bits that I would cut (and that’s saying something because I always want to make cuts), thanks to Kander & Ebb’s great score and Terrence McNally’s strong book. All of it informed the central conflict or reminded the ladies of the good times they had here, like the flashback that included the number we all were waiting for – the dance on roller skates that brought the house down. It was like they were tap dancing, but just happened to be wearing roller skates. This amazing, joyous memory was one that the girls would surely both want to keep, and one of the many in this show that audiences will treasure.
INFORMATION
“The Rink” is playing at Southwark Theatre until June 23, and tickets are only $25 (remember that is in pounddollars). If there’s any justice, it should transfer to the West End, although this tiny theatre is an advantage for this show.
STAGE DOOR
The situation at the Southwark is unique, because the building is just a cramped lobby-bar and then a hallway leading to the auditorium. There’s no stage door, and everyone – audience, cast, crew, bartenders – quickly ends up crammed together in this room. Whether you want to meet an actor or not, you’ll end up bumping into them as you come out of the bathroom or wait for a drink. It usually is great because it’s not awkward like it is at stage door; you’re all just occupying this same space and it would be weirder for you not to acknowledge that the actor you’re trying to pass did a great job. However, this was my first bad experience with this set-up. Most of the cast was super friendly and eager to chat, including Gemma and all of the men. But when I and a few other fans (not with me) tried to talk to Caroline, she ignored us. Now, I am the first person to remind fans that no actor ever has to stage door, and whether they decide to or not is completely up to them and they should not be judged on it. But when you are just in a tiny bar talking to people, it is not a good look for you to ignore people who are literally next to you. Caroline spoke with a few guys who knew someone who knew her for a good 20 minutes as we stood there just trying to say hello and great job, and when they mentioned that they would let her get to her other fans (gee thanks), she turned and went to someone that she knew. Despite standing next to her for more than a half hour, she never looked at me or the other girls I was standing with. It’s one thing to not do the whole stage door thing, but to ignore people who are literally next to you, waiting to talk to you just at a bar takes nerve. It kind of broke my heart because I wanted to tell her how amazing her performance was, sure, but also do you know how long I’ve been waiting to meet Nini Legs in the Air? YES THAT WAS HER. Ugh. Anyway. That’s my story. At least the following week Renee Fleming gave me a hug so you know, that’s much better especially since that’s the person who you’d understand being ‘above meeting fans’ yet wasn’t in the least.
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What It’s Like Seeing The Normal Heart During Another Pandemic
TL;DR it’s soul-crushingly ironic.
A few weekends ago, we had the complicated privilege of seeing Larry Kramer’s seminal work, The Normal Heart, now playing at The National Theatre. Kramer wrote the play, which premiered in 1985, during and about the rise of the AIDS epidemic in New York City in the early ’80s.
Whenever people talk about The Normal Heart, they use the phrase ‘searing indictment’. I mean not without good reason – it works, and it sounds good. It’s a ‘searing indictment’ of state and federal governments, of all aspects of the health system that failed to do literally anything to help the sick or help curb the spread. And, of the hindsight granted to us in viewing a community that was stuck between a rock and a hard place — not wanting to ruffle too many feathers in their attempt to get people to care, but doomed to fail unless they did so.
What this production ended up being, however, was an indictment of our present theatre-going community, and, of course, the entities tasked with ensuring our welfare. I am not comparing the situations or the people involved, but it was beyond ironic to see a play about a world-changing pandemic during a world-changing pandemic, and upsettingly so. You don’t want the lessons of Kramer and of AIDS and of incredible words like The Normal Heart to simultaneously be relevant and ignored, yet here we are.
In the play, Ned Weeks (Ben Daniels) is painted as the odd man out for being so quick to anger, so full of rage that he easily unleashes, while his peers try to remain calm and reserved and polite, as though that ever accomplishes anything. Early in the show, Ned says some whoa there things about Jews in the Holocaust and in America during the war who didn’t fight against what was happening. He rails against Jews for not fighting for what was right, as though they could have done anything. For the rest of the show, Ned lives firsthand through a refutation of this speech, as he and his community become the new embodiment of the powerless, with no one listening to them and no one willing to help except one lone doctor, Emma Brookner (Liz Carr).
There’s a lot I can say about this always moving, emotional show. I could talk about Ben Daniels’ lead performance, and how capably he carried this heavy, heavy show. I could talk about the quality of the supporting cast. I could wonder why it seemed like the famous Act II monologue of Dr Emma Brookner, always hailed as the most impressive featured role, seemed truncated even though it wasn’t. I could talk about the fine directorial choices like the gradual accumulation of physical junk on the floor, or in contrast how for some reason the play overall felt more overtly didactic than any production I’ve seen before, like it was solely a sequence of monologues.
However, none of these critical aspects of the play itself feel remotely important when considering the overall experience of this play, happening now, in this climate. I think of this experience and I am filled with incomprehensible fury. This audience at the National at a performance on a Saturday night represented the worst showing for maskwearing I’ve seen anywhere since the pandemic began. And I’ve been to America. Twice. I never knew what irony was until I was watching this play about how people weren’t taking a pandemic seriously while surrounded by people not taking a pandemic seriously. Ned yells at his friends when they refuse to entertain the idea of even suggesting to gay men to stop having promiscuous sex for now; they say this is a matter of personal freedom and identity. Guys, that’s just toooo on the nose, isn’t it? Ned says that their personal freedom is endangering HIS life. And a man across the aisle clapped and hooted while coughing openly. I wholeheartedly recognize and approve of Ned’s fury at his fellow man in failing to join him in his, because that’s how it feels being one of the few taking this pandemic seriously. Watching in real time as his righteous indignation, so beautifully and honestly written by Kramer, performed by Daniels, directed by Cooke, fell on such conspicuously deaf ears, it felt like the unavoidable condemnation was on our society now, not then.
Of course the situations are different, and the ignorance is based on different kinds of hate. Yet the emotions are the same — the frustration, the feeling of being abandoned, the feeling that your fellow man doesn’t care, the knowledge that he doesn’t. Because in case you didn’t know, we are indeed still in a pandemic that our government is refusing to take seriously. People in the healthcare community are on the news begging the government to do something, and the government responds with promises to the business communities that they won’t implement another lockdown, as though people in business can’t die of Covid. All the theatres I’ve returned to up to this point have politely and carelessly suggested that audience members wear masks, but without an actual rule that patrons must wear masks, it seems like roughly 80% do not. And for some reason, theatres state their belief that unless the government has a mask mandate, they do not have the legal authority to make or enforce one, which is a bunch of hot hot garbage.
Without an actual mandate from the theatre, and without staff enforcing the wearing of masks, theatre audiences are widely unmasked. I assumed that the kind of people choosing to see The Normal Heart, people voluntarily seeing a heart breaker about this sort of systemic and personal failure to curb a pandemic and help victims, would be the kind of people still wearing masks and giving a shit. I was very wrong!
I honestly still cannot wrap my head around the extraordinary irony of listening to Ned scream at his friends and community members about how they don’t care and aren’t doing enough, while we were sitting next to people who don’t care and aren’t doing enough, and who have the gall to cheer (and then ignore) the lessons being taught onstage. It’s seriously distressing to hear these lines about how other people are pretending nothing’s wrong and they don’t care if others die so long as they can go on acting in their own self interest, when that’s exactly what’s happening. It took all my strength not to turn to all the maskless people and be like, ‘aren’t you guys hearing this?’ Dr. Brookner’s big moment has her screaming at a medical committee that decides not to fund her research into AIDS; she yells at them to just do something, anything, or they would all be dead before they could. And the audience APPLAUDED. The people around us coughing and not covering their mouths and wearing their masks around their necks APPLAUDED. No, it’s not the same, what people could be doing to help now versus what they could do then. Because what we could do now is unbelievably simple and we have the scientific community’s data and backing instead of deadly stymieing. Just wear a mask. And you’re still refusing. You’re clapping at someone in play being angry at others for not doing anything, and yet you are refusing to do the easiest fucking thing of putting a fucking piece of cloth over your nose.
I do believe that individuals in our theatre community have a lot to answer for; two years in, we have the knowledge and ability to be responsible members of society on our own volition, without being ordered to give a shit by controlling entities or governments. But, as we’ve seen, humans won’t do the right thing en masse unless ordered to. So I blame the National Theatre, having the balls to put this show on and ignore its lessons by not enforcing mask wearing or having literally any awareness of it being a pandemic. (I also continue to blame the NT for its long-standing problem of having no ushers around in case of trouble. A few times up in the circle in the past years, I’ve searched desperately for a staff member to help with issues (including one audience member who was ill), and couldn’t find anyone in the whole upper level lobby or anything. They never have anyone anywhere once the show starts. Ridic.) And above all, it is the systemic fault of the Society of London Theatres and UK Theatre membership organizations for not issuing ANY regulations for their theatres. (Obsessed with their bullshit CYAs, like how SOLT’s website has a section for ‘well-being’ to help members and stuff deal with the pandemic. You know what would help everyone’s well-being? A mask mandate.) Literally while writing this, I got an email from Telecharge reminding me how all Broadway theatres are requiring proof of vaccination and enforcing mask wearing. Londoners, you officially lose your right to make fun of Americans. If Broadway can do this, London can do this. FUCKING DO IT.
Yes You’ll ‘Sweat’ from All the Anxiety You’ll Feel While Viewing this Distressing Play
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the play Sweat by Lynn Nottage, currently playing at London’s Gielgud Theatre until July 20.
You know how society as we know it is falling apart and there’s nothing we can really do about it, so decent (and not so decent, but no one deserves the crumbling of the world) people are suffering in poverty and drug addiction and racism and sexism and classism and overall misery, and we need governments to work together for the people in order to solve any of these societal problems but the people running things are too busy thinking about their own comforts instead of caring about anyone else, let alone all of society, so things are just falling apart for the regular person and it’s all incredibly depressing? Yeah, well, so, Sweat.
Lynn Notage’s highly distressing, highly moving play about Reading, Pennsylvania and the devastation caused by joblessness (as well as the aforementioned –isms) is a hell of a depressing show. Nottage interviewed real citizens of Reading (not including Michael Scott) to research this show, since Reading has notably experienced a horrible decline in employment and 40% of the population now lives in poverty. I don’t know how many times I can say ‘depressing’ in one review but we will probably break that record today. Sweat shows us the lives of a small group of friends and acquaintances in Reading before and after all their lives changed for the worse.
This group consists of people who work at the big factory in town, people who used to work at the big factory in town, and their kids who have little choice but to also work at the big factory in town: Martha Plimpton’s volatile Tracy and her equally hot-tempered son Jason (stereotypical and scarily accurate central-PA white people who probably voted for the cheeto toilet); management-material Cynthia and her son Chris (black people who have to work harder to prove themselves), plus their estranged husband/father who is now an addict; their floaty old-hippie now-drunk friend Jessie; the bartender friend Stan; the bar’s Mexican busboy Oscar; and the good-intentioned parole officer. Yes, parole officer: the show begins with the kids, Jason and Chris, just released from prison. The rest of the show – before returning depressingly (there’s another!) to present day – shows us what led up to their arrest.
If this sounds compelling to you, well good, because we are all living in this world, and Sweat felt like a genuine reflection of the hardships of the working class, from the fear of how quickly joblessness can destroy your life, to America’s opioid epidemic, to how this fear to have someone real to blame for your lot in life can so easily lead to blaming those who are different from you. As someone who tries to focus on making her social justice efforts intersectional, I found a lot of this show a gut-punch of a reminder that some other people who we write off as not caring about people different from them simply don’t have the ability, the time, the luxury of caring about anything except working enough to make enough money to feed themselves to stay alive and then repeat the next day, and all their next days. It doesn’t make them good or bad people (well, some of them are bad people); it just makes for a world where caring for each other isn’t seen as a priority, and so we’re stuck in this vicious cycle of shit.
Nottage’s nuanced playwriting shines best as she develops these characters, along with a pretty remarkable cast. Plimpton was of course incredible, but she scared the absolute shit out of me. She was 100% exactly like some people I’ve met. She even looked exactly like a woman I used to work with: same exact fake blonde hair and gruff demeanor and ease of saying suuuper racist things. She was like half the women in Upper Darby who say “Wha, you think ya better than me?? YA THINK YA BETTER THAN ME?” and then knock over the bar table. That was Tracy, and her white supremacist son never had a chance with her antagonistic tendencies. (NB: Never get face tattoos, just don’t, you’ll never get a job et al., and ESPECIALLY don’t get white supremacist face tattoos. Or, ya know, do, so we know to stay away from you.) I found the whole cast moving and convincing in their individual ways. My favorite was honestly Leanne Best, who had little to do as Jessie but managed to turn her one big scene into the most heartbreaking part of a show that’s all hardship. When she reminisces about how she was supposed to see the world as a young adult but she started working at the factory and never could stop, she keeps repeating the list of destinations she and her boyfriend had memorized as a sort of mantra: “Istanbul, Tehran, Kandahar, Kabul” and so on. Her melancholy and regret at never having left Reading was palpable and tragic, and it was a tiny but wonderful performance.
But the plot teeters a bit, and it’s hard to provide a strong enough answer as to what we were actually supposed to take away from how depressing it all is. I wish, I honestly really wish, that the play had ended a scene early. Once we see all the pre-prison scenes (most of the action is the flashback), we meet again with the parole officer with Jason and Chris. He’s trying to inspire them and get them to really try with their new leases on life, and his scene ends with him talking to both men but speaking to the audience, and saying something super inspiring like “so what are you going to do to make it better? what are you going to do?” and then the theatre blacks out and I was like ‘HOLY SHIT I WANNA DO ALL THE GOOD THINGS! LET ME GO DO THEM!’ and I found it incredibly powerful. But then there was another scene! And, this final scene was clearly supposed to be super moving, but it actually wasn’t, and considering the content, it’s a shame that it just doesn’t work.
Overall, however, it’s a decent, poignant look at modern tragedy. There’s so much nuance about how ingrained racism, for one example, can be. I was blown away realizing how Tracy blames everything on her friend Cynthia’s inability as a low-level manager to stop some huge things from happening in the company, yet completely accepts her (white) bartender friend Stan’s reporting that his boss changed a rule at the bar. This kind of subtle creation of each realistic character makes Sweat a play to see, even if you won’t really learn anything except ‘fork, this is a ball of shit.’
INFORMATION
Sweat ends its short run (intentionally limited; only 50 performances at this theatre) on July 20, but it’s the kind of show that I am sure will be popping up all over the place with regional theatres, tours, everyone trying it on for size given how relevant it is.
If you can get there before July 20, the best seats (I’m SO happy I remembered for my own good!) at the Gielgud, if you pee in the ladies room and pee often, are front stalls, about Row D-K, because the door to the kind-of-hidden ladies (WHY DO THEY WANT TO KEEP THESE BATHROOMS A SECRET) is literally RIGHT THERE, if you are sitting on the aisle stage right (that’s HOUSE LEFT). I was sitting three feet from the door to the bathroom door! It was the best ever! I was so happy! (And then so quickly unhappy, obviously (did you READ the review??)) It was also really well air-conditioned on the hottest day in London so far this summer, so it was nice not to literally sweat.
