March 12, 2019 -- Volume VI, Issue 7

As previously announced, this edition of Good News Friday is going to press on Tuesday, March 12. Bruce and Phil were in London all last week leading a group of 26 Virginia Rep supporters on the annual theatre trip. They are all now safely returned, so please enjoy this special London Edition of all the insider news that’s fit to email.

Our first theatre trip was 17 years ago. Bruce and Phil led a group of about 30 Virginia Rep supporters to New York City in late February 2002. It came about in response to a suggestion from Josée Covington of Covington Travel. She had previously been organizing trips for the Richmond Symphony and Richmond Ballet, and had received requests for trips with a theatre focus. That first Theatre IV/Barksdale trip was such a success that the following year we escorted a group of theatre lovers to London. Each year’s trip is a fundraiser in that $150 from the cost of each adventure comes in as a tax-deductible contribution to Virginia Rep. The opportunity to participate is open to everyone. Mainly the trips are friend-raisers, enabling Bruce and Phil to strengthen their relationships with the supporters who choose to come along for the ride. Including those first two sojourns, Bruce and Phil have led eight trips to New York, three trips to London, two trips to Ireland, and one trip to London and Paris. One year no trip was planned due to the craziness of the schedule, and two trips (one to Shakespeare’s Italy and one to Scotland) failed to “make.” 316 Virginia Rep loyalists have attended over the years, adding $47,400 to our nonprofit coffers. ALL of the trips have been exceptionally managed by Covington Travel. Next year we’ll be off once again to NYC! See below and sign up now!!

Our group took in a total of 8 plays and 8 musicals, all on London’s West End. The two plays everyone saw were the highly acclaimed revival of Agatha Christie’s courtroom melodrama, Witness for the Prosecution, and the World Premiere of All About Eve, a new stage adaptation of the classic American film, starring Gillian Anderson and Lily James. The group gave a thumbs up to the Christie, which was intriguingly staged in a site-specific production in the courtroom-like London County Hall. Four cast members provided a private talk-back immediately after the show. The group tended to agree with Ben Brantley’s recent review of Eve in the NY Times: “The anemic spectacle now sleepwalking across the stage of the Noël Coward Theater shares a title, characters and much of its dialogue with Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Oscar-winning 1950 film about the glamorous narcissists who inhabit the dark and glittering world of Broadway. Yet as adapted and directed by the international auteur Ivo van Hove, what was originally a crackling, high-gloss satire now feels like a horror movie without a pulse.” Other plays attended by individual travelers included: Admissions (“interesting but so so”), Betrayal (“brilliant”), Come from Away (“rousing”), Company (“exceptional”), Follies (“magnificent”), Hamilton (“available, affordable, incredible”), Home, I’m Darling (“disappointing”), Les Miserable (“great”), The Mousetrap (“highly enjoyable”), Nine to Five (“pure entertainment”), The Price (“very good”), Rip It Up (“tons of fun”), TINA – The Tina Turner Musical (“incredible”), and The Twilight Zone (“interesting”).

London is filled with world-class treasures. Each member of the group was given a London Pass, which provides admission to most (not all) attractions, and an Oyster Card, which provides weeklong access to the tube. In large and small groups, and as individuals, travelers went to see: the bookstores of Charing Cross Road, the British Library, the British Museum, Bruce’s walking tour of Shakespeare’s London (the Old George, Borough Market, Southwark Cathedral, the Golden Hinde, Winchester Palace), the Changing of the Horse Guards, Charing Cross, Churchill’s War Rooms, concerts at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Covent Garden, Harrods, Kensington Palace, the London Eye, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Notting Hill and Portabella Road Markets, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Shakespeare’s Globe, Stonehenge, Tate Modern, the Thames River Cruise, the Tower of London, Trafalgar Square, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the View from the Shard, Warner Brothers Studio Tour – The Making of Harry Potter, Westminster Abbey, and Windsor Castle. We all stayed at the Amba Hotel Charing Cross, and everyone LOVED the hotel and its location, adjacent to the West End theatre district and at the very center of London. Dee Dee White from Covington Travel served as our guide throughout, with Mike Long providing expert British Blue Badge support on days 1 & 2.

Next year we’ll be headed back to New York City and we are looking at dates in early March of 2020. Bruce and Phil are pushing hard to stay at the quiet, comfortable, conveniently located Belvedere Hotel on 48^th between 8^th and 9^th. We’ll get to and from the city via Amtrak, with special group boarding, and motor coach transportation from Penn Station to the hotel. We’re be beginning to work with producer friends soon to obtain tickets to top Broadway shows before they go on sale to the general public, including the two-part Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, winner of the 2018 Olivier and Tony Awards for Best Play, hopefully with a private in-theatre talk-back for our group after the performance. We’ll plan special, fun and informative one-hour walking tours of the theatre district and Central Park (meeting special guests along the way), a backstage tour of a major performance venue (Radio City Music Hall?), and pre- and/or post-show conversations with Virginia Rep artists currently working on and off Broadway. If you would like to join us, simply reply to this newsletter via email, and let us know that you’d like to be kept in the loop as we begin sending out information and taking reservations in a month or two. We’d love to have YOU join in on the fun!