millionreasons | Entries tagged with cillian

A day out Up West. Meet an email correspondent called Paul, an erudite Minnesotian, and possibly the only American to have ever gone to Grimsby for recreation. We have coffee in one of those little Soho joints that sell English greasy spoon food cooked by Italians, and now, it seems, run by Chinese selling Japanese food (wasabe peas, miso soup) along with the omelette & chips and lasagne. Such is London. Through the west end, past Trafalgar Square and the Norwegian fir, down Villiers Street and over Hungerford Bridge as dusk settles and the lights in plastic bottles on Festival Hall spark up, along with glimmers from the wheel, the glowing NFT and the bristling blue and white LCDs in trees. Down the Southbank and over Blackfriars Bridge to Aldwych.

It’s always odd to accompany someone who doesn’t live here, the city comes alive again as you see it through their eyes, seems novel and quirky and beautiful, and the people in it droll examples rather than an irritating mass who only exist to get in the way. Ambling, rather than rushing, makes everything different.

Leave Paul at the Lion King and return to Soho to eat tea with David at Hummous Bros before walking round flashing crashing Leicester Square funfair and eating ice creams although I manage to drop mine down my coat and onto Chinatown pavement. Sorry about the mess, Chinatown. Down Earlham St, home of London’s gayest Christmas decs to the Ambassador’s theatre (opposite the Ivy where we discover that instead of hummous, we could have eaten champagne risotto with white truffles if we’d had £45 in spare change. We’re here to see four Hollywood Stars prove that they can act on stage – Cillian Murphy, Neve Campbell, Michael McKean, who has been in many a Christopher Guest film, and the woman out of Third Rock from the Sun, except she’s ill and gone home, so there’s an understudy. Anyway, who’m I kidding, we’re here to see Cillian Murphy, and fortunately the theatre is only half full so we can sneak from Row Q to Row G, all the better to see Cillian’s lovely luminous face. And get seats costing the same as champagne risotto with white truffles for £20 (which appeals to my inner Doncastrian).

Anyway the play is pretty OK, if you like that kinda theatre thing, and Cillian is fantastic and a much better actor than Neville Campbell. Although it’s kinda disappointing that he looks more like this than this. And he’s such a tiny little thing. He’d have to stand on a brick.