I spent most of the day with good friends, J-L and E, who've been in London for a few days from their home in Burgundy. We met in the home of her daughter, L, who lived with my family for a few months 15 or so years ago. I wanted to know more about L and her partner's plans to co-parent: four adults with equal responsibility for the child(ren). I admit that when I was doing it with just one other adult I found our different approaches hard enough to negotiate and I was very impressed that they've thought through, and consulted other co-parents about, the many challenges of parenting very much better than I did beforehand.

I'd have happily carried on talking but my friends had a Eurostar to catch and I was on day two of my theatre-fest...

... The Picture of Dorian Gray - a one person show performed by Sarah Snook. It took me very much longer than the people around me to get into the play's use of technology. An impressive on-stage team was videoing her throughout, and a lot of the time the projections of her onto screens on the stage and around the theatre were very much more visible than she was (especially from where I was at the back of the balcony). The play had been marketed as one person playing 26 characters but actually, that is what actors do (admittedly not often that many, with impressively rapid wig-, costume- and prop- changes, in the space of two hours). But they don't normally act to an audience and to a camera at the same time, along with seamlessly editing in what must have been (unless technology can do a great deal more than I think it can) some parallel pre-recorded sequences. That meant Dorian could have conversations not only with two people, which happened live, but with a whole group of other characters Sarah Snook was playing.

It was only when she started filming herself with a phone and selfie-manipulating her face that I very belatedly clocked that the whole point was self-image and what the pursuit of youth and beauty does to us.

Completely faithful to the original story but brilliantly updated for modern audiences. On till May for anyone who can get to London.