Daily Blague

As announced, I went to see History Boys yesterday. I saw a slightly later showing, though. Arriving at the M66 bus stop near Lexington Avenue, I saw that the block between Lex and Third was blocked off by construction. It was far too cold to hang around for the (unlikely) possibility of a bus, so I sped to Park, where I took the first cab I saw, even though it was going uptown - the wrong direction.

In the taxi, I called my friend Nom de Plume. She had a hard day in front of her, stuck at home waiting for gas and cable to be installed in her new-to-her Brooklyn apartment. When she answered the phone, though, it was with a joyous note that told me that the gas and cable people had come and gone. I offered to wait for the next showing of The History Boys, if she was still interested in seeing it. I would simply hang out at the Lincoln Square Barnes & Noble. It sounded like a plan.

I didn't even have to buy a book, because I was carrying Andrew Tobias's Grief. Up and up the escalators I went to the café. I'd have taken a snapshot of the interesting view, looking over the tops of Juilliard and Avery Fisher and up into a cold blue sky through which small white clouds were scudding in a southeasterly direction, but a photograph, even if I'd been able to take a decent one with my phone, would simply have shown the dirt on the windows. Isn't that interesting - the things that we overlook in real life but can't get beyond in a picture? It suggests that different areas of the brain are involved in the two kinds of viewing. Grief, by the way, is short but serious.

Eventually I was viewing The History Boys, which, as announced, I'm not going to write about until the DVD comes out. By then I hope to have a copy of the play as well. The two shows are amazingly different - amazingly, when you consider that the actors are the same. Richard Griffiths (Hector) and Jamie Parker (Scripps) are two of the actors whose presence I felt to be more vibrant onstage, whereas Dominic Cooper (Dakin) was incomparably more intense onscreen. Frances de la Tour (Mrs Lintott) and Clive Merrison (Headmaster) were interesting to see in close-up. I can't speak for Stephen Campbell Moore, because he was off the night that we saw the show, and Jeffrey Withers ably took the part of Irwin. I can, however, see that Mr Campbell Moore was born for the part, at least on film.

When it was over (when, oh when, will we able to listen to Rufus Wainwright singing "Bewitched" at home? - he made the Rodgers & Hart staple sound like something he'd written himself), Ms Nom and I headed to Fiorello's, where we talked the hours away and I limited myself, historically, to one martini and two glasses of pinot grigio.

Ordinarily, I would have come home via public transport. But the wine, if it didn't make me sleepy, inclined me to seek comfort, so I hopped into another taxi. The driver, sensing my impatience with traffic jams, suggested taking the Drive through Central Park, and that made for a pleasant ride, even if we did get stuck behind a parade of horse-drawn carriages at one point. Talking to my ostentatious bond trader friend as Fifth Avenue whizzed by through the bare trees made me feel very plush.