Each summer we spend a wonderful week or two back in my home town London, with a jam-packed our schedule full of all the cultural delights the city has to offer. As much as I love Berlin, and the other brilliant capital cities I have been fortunate enough to live in since leaving London as an eighteen-year old, only in this city can one have access to world class culture in all forms.
This summer we were lucky enough to get tickets for the National Theatre's production of a stage adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
It was a beautiful production which used live music in really ingenious ways to bring the story to life. There was an also a very creative use of water on stage which added to the realism and the intensity of what is arguably Steinbeck's greatest work.
Having studied the novel as part of my A-Level English Literature course over twenty years ago it was lovely to return to the text which I had largely forgotten. In preparation for the play I treated myself to an Everyman's Library edition of the novel and reread it before we went to the play, thus enhancing the overall experience.
Tickets were quite hard to come by, despite booking early, so we settled for a matinee performance on a Wednesday afternoon. This in no way diminished our enjoyment of the show and it also enabled my husband and I to get a lovely early supper in Soho seen as our son was happily ensconced with our family in London while we were out on the town.