On Saturday I insisted that we get up at a reasonable hour in an attempt to thwart our jetlag; we began our day by getting tickets to the matinee performance of The Comedy About a Bank Robbery, getting brunch, and sorting out our British SIM cards.
The Comedy About a Bank Robbery was created by the same folks who created The Play that Goes Wrong, which we enjoyed immensely when we saw it in London (see “Small Plates and Zany Plays” from July 13, 2015 for a refresher!) and again when it recently transferred to New York. We didn’t know much about ...Bank Robbery before seeing it; we were pleased to discover that it was an affectionate parody of American screwball comedies and heist movies. The opening scene took place in a Canadian prison, with the warden questioning one of the guards about a particular prisoner. The dialogue was packed with “Don’t call me Shirley” style gags, the first of them being:
WARDEN: Name?
GUARD: Mitchell Jones.
WARDEN: Height?
GUARD: Five foot eleven.
WARDEN: Weight?
(long pause)
WARDEN: ...Weight??
(long pause)
GUARD: I am waiting, sir.
Which is a brilliant opening joke, as you could hear the audience catch on at a variety of points, and then we all knew what to expect and the rest of the jokes were much more rapid-fire.
The bulk of the story took place in Minneapolis. The characters had a variety of American accents, none of which were Minnesotan (to be fair, the character with a strong southern accent was later revealed to be from Arkansas. Which got me wondering, are these all places that British people are familiar with? Arkansas and Minneapolis aren’t exactly the most popular areas of America). While the dialogue was very clever, the highlights were technical and visual. It was clear that after the booming success of The Play That Goes Wrong (and Peter Pan Goes Wrong, which we had not heard about), this play had a significantly higher budget. The highlight for us was a scene from the point of view of two characters who are crawling through air vents, looking down into a room. The actors in the room were on a wall completely perpendicular to the stage, along with various pieces of furniture. The visual and physics gags in this scene were impressive and hysterical. While we ultimately laughed more at The Play that Goes Wrong, The Comedy About a Bank Robbery certainly did not disappoint!
After the play ended we did a bit of grocery shopping; we’re planning on eating out for pretty much all of our meals, but we wanted to stock up on uniquely British snacks.
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| "Proper Corn, Done Properly." Have you ever heard of anything more British?! |
Then we rested in the flat for a bit before having dinner at Hawksmoor, a popular steakhouse. We got grilled bone marrow on the side, which was pretty much what we imagined it to be--it was quite salty! Best to put on your steak rather than to have it straight. The steak was tasty, but there are multiple places in New York that I’d put far above it. We figured this is because we’ve tried a lot more steak in New York. However, Jon later found himself with a gentleman who thought it appropriate to make small talk at the urinal, and he claimed this was the best steak in the city. So maybe steak is just a thing New York does better, or there’s a distinct British style that we do not care for as much (there’s no crust at all on their steaks, it’s soft all the way through).
This ended up being a Very Long Day, and we were so exhausted that we slept until noon on Sunday, which was the beginning of a much needed Very Chill Day. We got lunch at Great Queen Street, where we ordered enough appetizers to create two meals (tapas are the best way to eat, and I will sometimes force a restaurant to be a tapas place whether it likes it or not). We then went to Debenham’s, a British department store, so that Jon could buy a blazer, which he’ll need for our high tea reservations at The Ritz next week.
That night we got fish and chips for dinner and saw the movie Baby Driver, which was a lot of fun. It’s about a young getaway driver who’s always listening to music to get him in the zone for reckless driving and to block out his tinnitus. The action sequences are timed to the music that he’s listening to, which should be done more often in movies because it makes everything twice as awesome. The movie’s probably not for you if you’re bored by car chases, but it’s also very funny and sweet.
Today we plan to go to the British Library, where they have the Magna Carta and original handwritten Beatles lyrics. These seem to us like the types of things that should be in the British Museum, but then we remembered that the British Museum is for all the things that the UK stole from its colonies.
xo
Hannah
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