Theater critic Chris Rawson kept this daily journal during the Post-Gazette's Critic's Choice theater tour to London, March 9-16. Reviews of many of the plays he saw should appear separately over the next two weeks.

Monday, March 10
London Journal 1: Fairy lights, sticky toffee and great actors

Sunday night, I flew toward London from Copenhagen, and for once I had no objection to being trapped in a holding pattern, because the whole of southeast England was a delicate tracery of golden fairy lights shimmering through patches of low-lying mist. It felt as though we were skimming over mythic archipelagos of golden islands separated by inky gulfs . . . though I suppose those were mainly just patches of forest or pasture, black in contrast to the ribbons of road or glowing spidery clusters of houses. Even puffs of low cloud looked like black holes superimposed on the golden tracery.

And then the lights doubled and quadrupled in intensity and we were flying east to west over the entire map of London, miniaturized like a fantastical architect's model, every famous landmark from the Tower to St. Paul's to London Eye to the Abbey seeming an intense little epitome of itself.

Checking into my hotel about midnight, I wasn't really bothered by the reports of expected gale winds the next day, because who comes to London for the weather? It will be what it will be. But when I stepped out early Monday morning to head out to Gatwick and meet the PG group flying in, accompanied by my deputy tour guide, Bingo O'Malley, I was buffeted sideways by what certainly was a gale, and one laced with cold rain.

No matter: by the time we were all on the motor coach and headed back to London, the sun was out, and when we reached the hotel, it was raining again. So it goes. As I always say, if it's raining when you leave you London hotel, be sure to bring your umbrella, because you need it right away, and if it isn't raining, bring it anyway, because you'll need it later.

The London news this day was the previous night's Olivier Awards, dominated by "Hairspray," which seems fair enough recompense for all those times the Brits have come over and scarfed up the Tonys. Unfortunately Rob Ashford, nominated for choreography and directing for "Parade," was swept aside by the tide for "Hairspray," which also won best actor, actress, supporting actor (where one category covers both male and female) and best musical. Best lead actor in a play went to Chiwetel Ejiofor in the title role of "Othello" and lead actress to Kristin Scott Thomas as Arkadina in "The Cherry Orchard."

Monday evening we had a welcoming dinner at Brown's, my favorite theater-central brasserie. It's on St. Martin's Lane, right by the Duke of York's and the Albery, around the corner from another half-dozen theaters. It's a great place to start a London week, forced to choose for dessert between sticky toffee pudding and profiteroles drenched in warm chocolate sauce.

Group members found their sea legs so quickly, they even made their own way back to the hotel, leaving Bingo and me free to disdain jet lag and go on to one of the early previews of Yasmina Reza's "God of Carnage," a crisp, smart, funny play about two couples brought together (or kept apart) by a fight between their young sons. Matthew Warchus directs Ralph Fiennes, Janet McTeer, Ken Stott and Tamsin Grieg -- this is why one comes to London!

Tuesday, March 11
London Journal 2: London Walks and Sir John Soames

This morning we hit the ground running -- more literally, walking -- with a private London Walks tour of The City from St. Paul's to the Tower. Our guide was Fiona, very personable with an engaging touch, as you might guess when you find out she doubles as a juggling instructor. It was a blowy day, intermittently rainy, but never really bad and certainly milder than Pittsburgh. And everywhere we see daffodils, fruit trees and magnolias in bloom, so we know spring is well under way.

I did what I always do the first couple of days in London, running around to pick up theater tickets and also checking out the National Portrait Gallery so there wouldn't be any surprises when I led a tour of the Tudor-Victorian rooms the next day. Standing in the room I think of as The Age of Johnson (as 18th century lit surveys used to be called), I noticed the portrait of Dr. Johnson was missing. Remonstrating with a guard, I learned it had been moved downstairs for a special exhibit on "Brilliant Women: 18th Century Bluestockings," set to open the next day.

London theaters scatter their mid-week matinees. I didn't have time for one this day, but several group members did, going to "The 39 Steps," among several other possibilities,

In the later afternoon I led the more intrepid group members on a walk from the hotel to the National Theatre. It looks like a long way on the map, but it takes less than a half-hour on the ground. Going right through the heart of the West End makes clear how accessible London is. Everyone scattered to eat in the various buffets or cafes available, enjoying the music in the lobby, while I tucked into the NT bookshop, my favorite in London.

And then we had "Much Ado About Nothing," starring the perfectly matched Simon Russell Beale and Zoe Wanamaker, both well into middle age, which (given their skills) adds a fresh layer of wry experience to the humor of last-chance love. More about the delicious staging in my eventual review -- and about the memories it stirred up of the first time I saw "Much Ado" at the NT, back in the Olivier era at the Old Vic, with Robert Stephens playing opposite the young Joan Plowright because his original Beatrice, Maggie Smith, was out having his baby.

For me, London is a palimpsest of theater, but it is also a hyper palimpsest of history, written large. Everywhere you turn you see several different centuries juxtaposed by proximity, playing off each other with parallels and contrast.

Wednesday, March 12
London Journal 3: Brilliant women and Quantumesque theater

Off to the National Portrait Gallery with those of our group who were interested or hadn't had my tour on a previous trip). I used to call this "everything you need to know to watch Masterpiece Theatre," but what really justifies it is the faces, often of people we think we know well through their writing or other accomplishments. The politically significant figures are especially interesting, since for them a portrait's assertion of reality and personality seems an extra shock.

I moved quickly (and superficially, of course) though about three centuries of British history in some 75 minutes, before turning the group loose somewhere in the 19th century, urging them to wander themselves through the 20th century rooms and new acquisitions.

Then I headed for the press opening of "Brilliant Women: 18th Century Bluestockings," where I had the pleasure of joining a tour/briefing by the exhibit's curators, Elizabeth Eger (an 18th century scholar at King's College, London) and Lucy Peltz (NPG 18th century curator) -- and there was also free coffee and cookies!

"Brilliant Women" is a meaty exhibit on an interesting subject -- the cultural authority (or suppression) of accomplished women -- but it's out-glamorized by the NPG's bigger special exhibit of the moment, "Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008." What an array of literary lions, actors and other famous folk, including those recent staged group shots for which Vanity Fair is famous.

As the "Brilliant Women" catalog makes clear, there's an inevitable and intriguing connection between the two exhibits in the whole growth of celebrity and its relationship to power. Many contrasts, too: pioneers like Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft could be destroyed by intimations of impropriety, but that (up to and beyond posing nude) serves their modern heirs well. Or does it really? Food for thought.

There was no group play planned, but Wednesday is a popular matinee day, so like some others in the group, Bingo and I went to two shows. The hit was "Brief Encounter" by the adventuresome and multi-talented Kneehigh Company from Cornwall, staged in Quantumesque fashion at an active movie theater on Haymarket. Primarily a play, it also uses film clips both real and ersatz and a whole array of musical hall interludes. Indeed, it starts when you enter the theater and find ushers (actually the cast) playing '30s and '40s tunes, mainly (as is fitting) by Noel Coward. It's going to be fun to write about. If you're going to be in London before July, when it is planned to end, put it on your list. If there's any justice, it will extend.

In between plays I went to my favorite shirt shop, Lewins, where they still make the button-downs that (with my petrified style sense) I like. Unfortunately, I discovered the solid colors I prefer have given way to stripes and checks. Why fix something that isn't broken?

At night, we went to Patrick Marber's "Dealer's Choice," a big hit 10 years ago that I missed then. This is a solid revival, but the drama of men interacting in the testosterone-saturated arena of poker isn't as fresh as it once was. Still, I'm surprised I can't recall anyone having done it in Pittsurgh.

Thursday, March 13
London Journal 4: Soane, Tolkien, Bond and Spitzer

Today I had the pleasure of taking Bingo to perhaps my favorite London museum, Sir John Soane's. I first saw it in 1967 and used to drop in on most trips -- I've accumulated at least four well-worn and annotated editions of its guidebook -- but I guess I haven't been there for a few years, because I discovered they've added a new gallery in the left-hand of Soanes' three townhouses, plus display space in the cellar, and they've done a lot of work on the backyard vistas, grottos and other oddities.

The Hogarths are as astonishing as ever and the ground floor breakfast room is still my favorite domestic room anywhere, period, no qualifications. And lo, there is a new guidebook, now added to my collection, along with a new (to me) book on the Soanes' family life, along with promises that we will get to see some of those upstairs family rooms in the years ahead.

Thursday is also a good matinee day, and today's two shows were the three-hour, mega-mystical "Lord of the Rings" at Theatre Royal Drury Lane and Edward Bond's strange grim comedy, "The Sea," at Theatre Royal Haymarket. That both theaters are noted historical landmarks with former royal ties is the only similarity between these shows, which are as disparate as theater can get.

I had seen "Lord of the Rings" nearly two years ago in Toronto and liked a lot of it, though it was bloated with repetitive battles of unnecessarily epic length. But what was there a 3 1/3-hour show (already cut down from its earlier opening length) is here just three hours, a huge improvement. Some of the lead actors seemed muffled in a sense of Importance, but lots of it is magic. It's just about ready for New York.

[LATER ADDED NOTE, March 15: Well, what do I know? I now see from the London papers that "Lord of the Rings" will close in June. Everyone cites this and the preponderance of negative reviews as proof that it's a flop. Actually, the coverage goes further, quoting those sarcastic review quips everyone deplores but secretly relishes, without really noting there were some positive reviews, too. The producers, however, say they will go to Germany and also tour. No mention yet of New York. Maybe the dollar's so low it just isn't worth the risk.]

What to say about "The Sea"? I chose it for the group because of the presence of the great Eileen Atkins. But the true eccentric star is Bond, the voluminous English playwright few know unless they've heard of the outrage some of his plays have caused, especially "Saved," in which a baby is stoned to death in a baby carriage. (No, not really.) "The Sea" has some of that shock, especially in a disturbingly funny burial scene in which the self-obsessed mourners start to squabble and the ashes due to be scattered end up on everyone's clothes.

I'm looking forward to writing a proper review of this one, in order to make sense of such contradictory material. It feels like late, cranky, prophetic Ibsen or Shaw, or maybe the more abstract Albee.

I haven't had time this trip to read three or four daily papers as I often do, but I've seen enough to note again how fully the U.S. is covered, shaming the brief attention Americans give to news from Europe. Several folks I've talked to in pubs have had ready and informed opinions about Hillary and Barack.

Not that the press coverage is always high-minded. Yesterday I was talking about the "Brilliant Women" and Vanity Fair exhibits at the NPG and the issues they raise of the cultural authority of women and the relationship of celebrity to power. Well, the London papers have been full of a contemporary version of all this, the sort of scandal that is their sexual meat and profitable potatoes -- the sudden downfall of Eliot Spitzer. Ashley Alexandra Dupre, we are told (accompanied by very fetching full-color photos) is likely now to see her dreams of a singing career given a boost by the mobs checking her out on MySpace.

Friday, March 14
London Journal 5: Jeff Goldblum at the Old Vic

Today's group highpoint was definitely at day's end, when we went to the Old Vic and saw Kevin Spacey, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Michelle Kelly ("Sweeney Todd," the movie) in that snap-crackling comedy of Hollywood ferocity and self-importance, David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow." Afterward, we went around to the stage door and Goldblum came out to chat with the group from his hometown.

If you know the play (as you might from its 1991 production at the Pittsburgh Public or its 1988 debut on Broadway), which role would you give to which man? Director Matthew Warchus cast Spacey as Charlie Fox, the feral agent, and Goldblum as Bobby Gould, the needy new studio chieftan. That's perfect. (I'll explain in my eventual review.) But Goldblum told us Spacey, who is after all the Old Vic artistic director, had originally penciled himself in to play Gould. Then Warchus brought Goldblum on board.

As I say, I think he made the right casting choice, but I'd be real interested to see it the other way around, too. Maybe they'll bring it to New York and do just such a flip-flop run, like the one John C. Reilly and Philip Seymour Hoffman did in "True West."

Back in the morning, after seeing everyone at breakfast and providing such bits of advice as I could manage, I went back to sleep some more, working off the exhaustion from having last night watched the whole play-by-play on my computer of Pitt's overtime victory over Louisville. I don't think I'll make it through the Pitt-Marquette game, tonight -- remember, there's a four-hour time difference. But Go Pitt!

In the late afternoon, I went with some of the group to take a "flight" (as they call it) on the London Eye, the elegant great observation wheel that towers over the south bank of the Thames. Even with the dozen or so times I've done it, starting back in early 2000, when they were letting press on before it was officially open, I've never tired of the half-hour journey -- a "there and back again," as Frodo would say.

Which reminds me: someone is actually reading this journal, because I've had an email query about my favorite London museums and sights. It's an impossible question, like being asked to name the top five musicals of all time. But that's exactly the kind of thing I often do take a stab at, and even I must admit that the museums of London are almost as great an attraction as the theater. So here goes.

In making recommendations to my PG tour groups, I usually play safe and list as the top five the British Museum, National Gallery, Tate Modern, Royal Academy and Victoria & Albert. And I suppose my second five would be the Museum of London, Cabinet War Rooms, Tate Britain, Wallace Collection and Somerset House (which includes several collections).

But the five personal favorites I'd actually put ahead of all those ten are the National Portrait Gallery, Sir John Soane's Museum, Shakespeare's Globe, Dennis Severs House and the British Library.

And what about the great markets, which are living galleries of a kind? -- Portobello Road, Harrods Food Halls, Burlington Arcade, Leadenhall, Columbia Road Flower Market, Spitalfields, etc. Or the National Theatre bookshop! Or the essential sights: St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, Covent Garden, London Eye, Tower of London and on and on and on. That's a couple of dozen places to visit -- and there are many, many more than these. You can't do it all in six days.

Maybe I'll make it to eight or nine this week, at the most. So much London, so little time.

Saturday, March 16
London Journal 6: Museums and winding down

Saturday in London means Portobello Road, so off I went right after breakfast with part of the group in tow, to throw ourselves into the maelstrom. It was a beautiful day, cool not cold, with enough sun to highlight the flowering trees. Surprisingly Portobello wasn't as insanely crowded as usual. I had one object to seek, assigned by my wife, and I found it with the first try; so I celebrated by allowing myself a visit to an antiquarian book dealer, where, in scanning the shelves for 18th century calf as I normally do, I found one book I just had to have.

Leaving the others to set their own pace, I wandered eastward, bought a paper and settled down at an outside cafe table with a coffee for an hour of unhurried bliss. Then I found a bus heading back to Somerset House on the Strand to see the Courtauld Gallery exhibit, "Renoir at the Theatre: Looking at La Loge." Along the way my bus edged around the huge anti-war rally (Out of Iraq, Out of Afghanistan) in Trafalgar Square. I spent some time on the edge of the rally, with very mixed feelings, as any American must have.

In contrast, the Renoir exhibit was very choice, by which I mean gratifyingly concise. And I like the way the environment of the theater box provides a kind of chaste thematic focus to restrain what can be Renoir's excessive whipped cream.

After the Courtauld, I was planning to head for the Irish food festival in Covent Garden, but the streets extending out from Trafalgar were now blocked by the police, so the bus I was on circled up toward Holborn and I went instead to my next intended destination, the British Museum.

There, I was unable to talk myself into a ticket for the big event, the exhibit of Chinese terracotta soldiers, in spite of being a member not only of the press but also the Friends of the BM, which I had counted on doing the trick. Instead, I spent a happy two hours in the early Britain rooms (prehistory up to the Norman Conquest), where I haven't been for years.

I say happy, but there was a touch of melancholy, too. I'm of an age to remember the fusty old BM, when it was (to me) primarily a library. I did the research for my dissertation on John Gay there, spending long days in the North Library. Now, the famous old round reading room is an exhibition space (full of terracotta soldiers, in fact) and the handsome long King George III Library is an exhibition space, as well, albeit one with some well-chosen tidbits of this and that having to do with my favorite century, the 18th.

In one expected way, the new BM beats the old one -- the expanded shop has all kinds of goodies. I spent another half hour there, with I hope happy results in presents for my family.

Wonder of wonders, this was Saturday, a prime matinee day, and I had spent the afternoon in a museum! I could have seen Felicity Kendall in Coward's "The Vortex" or any number of other enticements, but I had eased up. Or slacked off. Or something. Call it middle age, or worse.

For the evening's play I decided to eschew the West End and continue the 18th century theme by going to see a real oddity, "Three Hours after Marriage," a 1717 farce, a satire of scientific and critical eccentricity by that same Gay, in concert with his pals, Alexander Pope and Dr. Arbuthnot. It was in a sort of cellar space under some South Bank arches, but sad to say, it was pretty amateurish, so I surprised myself again and left at intermission. That gave me time to treat myself to a large (no surprise here) Indian dinner.

Then back to the hotel, head spinning with divine spices, to share farewell drinks with the group. Then packing. And will I stay up all night to "watch" Pitt play Georgetown on my computer?

Sunday, March 16
London Journal 7 (last): return journey, looking back

Yes, I did stay up -- or rather, I dozed off and woke up about 3 a.m., in time to fire up the laptop and shepherd Pitt through the end of its win over Georgetown. So I feel I participated (in this middle-of-the-night way) in Pitt's four Big East victories.

But I paid for it, having to get up a couple of hours later to finish packing. It's been one of those days, endless traveling by everything from jet to horse cart, or just about. Our bus left the Radisson Edwardian Kenilworth Hotel (our London base, and it's about time I mentioned it) about 9:45 a.m., London time, and now it's 8 p.m. Detroit time, where I'm writing this. That's more than 15 hours elapsed so far, and it'll be nearly four more hours before I finally throw myself into my Pittsburgh bed.

Not that I'm really complaining. I'm glad the world hasn't completely shrunk. But I sure wish we had proper international flights to and from Pittsburgh.

We reached Detroit just in time for me to settle into a bar, tuck into a cheeseburger (one of the categories in which America has England beat) and enjoy the NCAA draw on TV. After Pitt won the Big East, I figured them for a 4 or 5 seed, but when Georgetown got a 2 and Louisville a 3, I thought a 3 might be possible. But 4 is fine. Go Pitt!

On the long trans-Atlantic flight, I finally read some of the London papers that had piled up, so I conclude this year's London Journal with a few random tidbits.

• The Independent is running a series of 14 brochures they call The Great Poets. The one I saw is a nice little 18-page survey of Wordsworth (with Coleridge appended). Here's whom they count as the favorite poets in the English language, chronologically: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Pope, Blake, Burns, Wordsworth, Keats, Browning, Whitman, Dickinson, Hopkins and Hardy, with some 23 others appended here and there. So two Americans made the list, but not Yeats; I guess World War I was the cut-off. (Read more at www.independent.co.uk/poets.)

• The Daily Telegraph had a compelling piece by Neil McCormick on the unfairness of attacking Amy Winehouse as "the poster girl for drug abuse," as the U.N. drug czar has done, claiming that she glamorizes destructive behavior. On the contrary, he points out that, "her closely (and somewhat salaciously) documented journey from pop princess to barely functioning addict seems more like a cautionary tale."

What really caught me was this quick survey of the links between popular music and drugs: "alcohol and the blues, marijuana and jazz, LSD and psychedelic rock, cocaine and disco, speed and punk, weed and reggae, crack and rap, ecstasy and house music . . . ." I'm going to ask Scott Mervis if this list holds up.

McCormick continues: "A study published last month by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine [!!] that one-third of the most popular songs in America (based on the 2005 Billboard charts) mentioned substance abuse of some kind" -- led by hip hop, followed by country and western.

• The Sunday Telegraph just had an interview with Lord Andrew Webber. Apparently he's been doing a series of those TV reality shows to cast leads for various shows; the current one is to choose an Oliver and a Nancy for "Oliver!" He says that both "Woman in White" (weak second act) and "Whistle Down the Wind" (no specifics given) were "mistakes." And he is working on a sequel to "Phantom."

• I also picked up an issue of The Stage, which is sort of like the English Backstage. There's enough of interest in that for a separate journal entry, as soon as I sleep off this day's endless journey.

It's good to be back.