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So, last weekend I ventured across the pond to see visit

halotolerant and see Take That's Odyssey Tour. Twice! With a bonus theatre outing to see Tom Hiddleston in Pinter's Betrayal.

I've been trying to put up a post about the trip all week, but I haven't had time until the evening, at which point the jet lag has inevitably taken me down. But tonight I'm still more or less awake, so here goes.

I got Halo to take this pic in front of the TT poster outside the O2, and I have to say it didn't turn out too badly. (The sepia tone is courtesy of a non-fannish friend who got hold of the pic on Facebook.)

I found out about Betrayal rather late, but still managed to get us rather good seats, and I'm so glad I did. It's a fascinating play, and the cast, headed by Hiddleston, was top notch. The story concerns a woman having an affair with her husband's best friend, and the twist is that the story is told chronologically backwards, starting at the point when the affair has been over for several years, going back to its very beginnings. At the end, both Halo and I had the thought that there was a way out from all the angst for these characters, and that way was a nice polyamorous relationship, though that probably wouldn't have flown in the '70s when the play was written.

Take That always does so much visually with their tours that it really does help to see them multiple times. This time 'round, the set was built around this giant sphere that was covered in LED displays, so it could do stuff like this

One thing you always get a lot of in a TT show is ticker tape. And the first night, we were close enough to the B stage that we were covered in ticker tape. (I don't know how they sing when the stuff is coming down, 'cause I swear I nearly inhaled a lungful of it, but it does look amazing.)

One of my absolutely fave TT songs is Shine, and that always gets a major production number. The time, the set was very art deco-ish, with the dancers strapped into these peacock tail contraptions covered in lights. And you can see the stage built into the side of the sphere.

Production numbers aside, the thing that really makes a TT show is how into it the audience gets. I couldn't resist taking a panoramic shot of the arena during Rule the World at the end of the show, so you can see how many people, from the front row to the top of the furthest section, has fired up the lights on their mobiles.

Apart from theatre and concerts, we also indulged in some Sebastian Stan viewing. I'd brought over my DVDs of Political Animals, and we plowed through the lot. The show is full of terrible people making Bad Decisions, but Seb is brilliant and very pretty as the gay son of a former president with addiction issues.

I'd also suggested an outing to see Endgame, but since we spent the better part of two days discussing how angry we were at how they'd handled (or not handled) Steve and Bucky's relationship, we decided we'd enjoy a re-watch of The Winter Soldier far more.

All in all, it was a brilliant trip, and over far too quickly.