A Day with Dominic West

Thursday was the AWC's monthly Theatre Day.  I met a group of ladies at the TKTS half-price ticket booth in Leicester Square and after a bit of discussion, negotiation, and last-minute mind-changing, managed to divide ourselves into three groups based on the matinees we wanted to see.  Once we had all acquired the appropriate tickets, we had lunch at a nearby restaurant.  Since it was a lovely day, we sat outside at a table for 12.

AWC Ladies at Lunch

I was happy to have another opportunity to chat with some of the other AWC members, several of whom I had met before.  We had plenty of time before any of the matinees began, so we lingered for a while after lunch and kept talking until it became clear that the restaurant would really like to put our table to more lucrative use.  We still had nearly an hour before the show I decided on started at 3, so the four of us walked around Covent Garden for a while and got some ice cream before heading to the Duchess Theatre to see Butley.

Butley at the Duchess Theatre

The play is a dark comedy about a misanthropic college professor, played by Dominic West (from the TV show The Wire), who is having a particularly bad day.  Many of the supporting cast members looked familiar --  I didn't recognize their names, but I had seen them in other British TV shows and movies.  The theater is very small and intimate, so even though we had just bought our tickets that day, we had great seats right in the middle of the 10th row.  We all enjoyed the play, even if we didn't get all the jokes.  I will definitely try to do this again next month -- it was a fun afternoon.

After Josh and I both got home and made dinner, we sat down to watch the first two episodes of a new BBC series called The Hour.  It's sort of like Mad Men meets The Mary Tyler Moore Show, with a little crime drama thrown in for good measure.  The show is set in a TV newsroom in the 1950's with an ambitious female producer and a handsome on-air personality played by... Dominic West!  It was odd to see the same actor play such completely different characters in the same day.  I think we were more intrigued by the murder mystery subplot than the dysfunctional lives of the main characters, but we still enjoyed it enough to look forward to watching the rest of the series.  It will be airing on BBC America starting August 17, if you want to check it out for yourself.