Picture of the Day: A string puppet working the West End Live Festival today. The crafting is beautiful, but the way the puppeteer was animating this guy was almost surreal.

Another full day in London. The tech people were working at the theater starting at 9:30am to focus the lights. Clifton our wonderful LD came directly from the Airport and started to work. As we knew it would be, the stage is 20% smaller than the Helen Hayes theatre. This means that we really have to start all over setting the trunks and Clifton has different angles to figure on when focusing. When I got to the theatre about 10:30 the set had been flown in and the trunks were piled on stage. This is a very intimate stage and you might even call it a jewel box, but at that moment with all the trunks strewn about it looked like a airport baggage claim nightmare. I wondered if it would ever look like my show.

Slowly as we find the right trunks to go in the right places the set begins to take shape like some jigsaw puzzle. After a few lights are focused and the gels are set it begins to take on that magic look. There is not a bad seat in the house and the "Circle" ( the balcony to us Americans) is a really beautiful angel on the show. There are some seats on the sides of the balcony, almost like boxes that I thought would be really bad seats and they turn out to be good seats. There are perhaps four seats in the stage left boxes that have an obscured view of Harry's trunk, but that is all. I was remarking to Clifton that the stage was small. He pointed out that because it is the size it is there would be more focus on the performance. I think people will really be involved.

We had to stop by 3:00. Since it was Murphy's Birthday Andrew took, us out to a lunch at the Ivy. It was Sunday dinner with a typical English clientele. Unfortunately our table was anything but typical. The party consisted of Murphy, Paul, Sandi, Andrew, Clifton an American television writer friend of Paul's and me. As we do, the stories began and soon we were laughing. Several times we were given a glance from other tables. It was a pleasant look as if to see who was having such a good time. I never felt like we were being obnoxious, but I do know we were having the best time of any other party there.

We got Clifton to the Dolphin House, which is central headquarters for The Two and Only, and got him checked in. The four and only had about an hour before we were expected at a dinner party across town. Ron Able is in town, staying with his cousin. He decided to invite us to the house for more Murphy birthday celebrating.

The dinner was fabulous and the company was great. The house was classic. A 1720 structure that Ron's cousins Stuart and Gezzel have remodeled. It was originally on the far North end of London, until the town took in the farm land beyond. A four story row house with basically two rooms on each floor. At one point the building was a book store with apartment above. The book store became the headquarters for the Socialist movement at the turn of the 19th century. We had dinner in a room that once was the meeting place of Karl Marx, George Bernard Shaw and painter William Morris. There were definite vibes coming from the structure even though it is now quite modern. It just seemed like we were in some way having dinner with all the people who had ever been in that room.

As Eddie Izzard once said, "I'm from Europe, where the history comes from". How true. Dining in a house that was built before America was settled will change your perspective.
As you were,
Jay