London: frolicking

There's nothing quite like a cold house and a warm bed and no particular place to be at any particular time to make you want to stay in bed. But this is London and there's too much to see and do to spend all day in bed as attractive an option as that may seem to be.

After a fair bit of waffling and general indecisiveness last night, we decided on a show to see rather quickly this morning. We opted for the matinee showing of Epitaph For George Dillon at the Comedy Theater which was billing Joseph Fiennes as the title character. If you watch reasonably classy movies, you might know him as the title character from Shakespeare in Love. If you watch R-rated movies solely for nudity then you probably know him from Killing Me Softly.

Before the show we toured the National Gallery. I saw a few paintings that caught my eye. I liked a couple pieces by John Constable for the way the light came off of them. Perhaps some prints would make for a bit of decoration in my apartment, but I suspect the colors just wouldn't be the same.

The play was good. It was about an actor/playwright living which seemed to make the play self-consciously referential. Perhaps it made the audience a little self-conscious too if they spent time thinking about the dialogue. The protagonist started as someone who could've been a cynical me. By the end, he had changed, but not in what I would call a good way. At least, it's not a change I would want to make, but then again, perhaps I'll never be forced to compromise the way he had to.

After the play, we headed over to the Tate Modern for the principle purpose of looking at the Russian propaganda. I had seen it before, but being there this time made me wonder about what the corresponding propaganda from other countries looks like. In particular, as I looked at some from WWII, I wondered what it would look like side-by-side with what was produced by the United States. It would be interested to see how two at least temporary allies approached the task of rallying the people. Also, what would it look like next to German propaganda of the same era.