There's no place like London.

Today is my last full day in London…I’m flying out tomorrow afternoon from Heathrow.

I can’t believe everything is over so quickly, it feels like I just got here maybe a week or two ago, not at all like I’ve been here for a month.

This afternoon I’m going on an adventure with my friend Claudia, and tonight we’re seeing our last play, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). I haven’t updated in a while because I’ve been super busy, but I am planning on a big end-of-trip update tomorrow, maybe in the airport or on the plane.

I will miss this place. Well, maybe not this specific place (living in a dorm kinda sucks no matter how nice it is), but I will definitely miss London. It’s a beautiful city and so much of the theater I’ve been able to experience here was absolutely incredible, and I hope I get to come back here someday and perform in these spaces and work with some of these actors because their work was really awe-inspiring.

No place like London, indeed.

This weekend all my friends here went to Paris, so for 2 days I had some time to explore on my own. Of course, because I am me, that meant going to museums and seeing two more shows in the West End.

On Friday afternoon, I trekked to the Science Museum. It is massive, so there was no way I was going to see it all, but I decided to walk through until I found an exhibit that interested me. My first stop was an exhibit that covered advances in technology from 1750-2000, which I loved. There were all kinds of amazing things on display, including trains from the 1800s, vintage cars, and a super computer from 1976. I also went into the Wellcome Wing, which seems to be a newer, more interactive wing of the museum. There was a small exhibit on recyclable fashion, and a really cool interactive exhibit on the human brain.

After spending about 2 hours in the Science Museum, I went to the West End because I had tickets to see Journey’s End at the Duke of York’s Theatre. When I got in, my 15 pound partial view seat for the upper circle was upgraded to row J of the stalls in the center, which was awesome. I was really excited to see this because I had missed this production when it was in New York about 4 years ago, and it’s been touring the UK and is now doing a 55-performance sit-down engagement in London. It’s a beautifully written play; the entire thing takes place in one room, but you can constantly hear the sounds of battle above the hut where the officers are staying and so the war is a constant presence. Without spoiling the ending, it’s kind of a devastating play, and at times really hard to watch. I loved every second of it though.

On Saturday I went to V&A, which is an art and design museum. Just the scope of it is unbelievable; I don’t think I’d be able to see all of it in a lifetime. I went through the sculpture gallery, the medieval exhibit, the casts courtyard (which contains casts of massive pieces that mostly came from churches…amazing stuff), and parts of the 20th century art gallery. I basically want to live there. It reminded me a lot of the Met at home, but it’s also quite different and they have some extremely old things there.

Then on Saturday night I went to see War Horse at the New London Theatre (which FUN FACT is owned by the Really Useful Group…*insert Patti LuPone sass here*). Also a World War I play, but remarkably different in tone from Journey’s End. War Horse is much more of a visual spectacle, and it’s more about the relationship between Albert and Joey than the war itself. The text of the play isn’t the best ever, but the physical production is stunning. The horses truly come to life, and it’s hard not to care about them as characters. It’s a much less sophisticated look at World War I than Journey’s End (it is, after all, adapted from a children’s book that I am now dying to read), but it’s emotional and moving nonetheless.

Sunday, a few of my friends had returned from Paris. My friend Kristin and I are both big Harry Potter geeks, and so while the rest of our friends were at the Globe, we went on a hunt for Harry Potter things. First, we went to look for the spot where Ron, Harry, and Hermione Stun and transform into the three Ministry of Magic workers in Deathly Hallows Part 1. Along the way, we stumbled across a British cavalry museum, complete with mounted guards:

After exploring the gorgeous courtyard a little more, we found the street we were looking for! Cue pictures of…a metal gate and then us peeking around the corner like Ron does in the film.

After that, we went towards London Bridge to find the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron from the first film! Cue more pictures in front of the Leaky Cauldron and then in the street that Harry and Hagrid walk down before they reach it.

…I’m actually a ghost, it’s fine.

I wish it was real omg. /geek

Then this afternoon I had another adventure by myself…I took the tube to Harrod’s and walked around a bit before sitting down in a coffee shop in the store and enjoying a chocolate danish and some delicious bordeaux wine. I then proceeded to have an adventure on the ride home that was a result of a combination of general laziness, rerouted trains, and being slightly buzzed and happy from the wine I drank. Basically I was smushed against the wall of the train and continued reading Game of Thrones like nothing was happening, it was actually not an unpleasant experience for me. …perhaps I should drink wine more often, because under normal circumstances I probably would have been seething.

(Note: I was not incapacitated in any way, just…pleased with life. Just for those of you who are concerned for my well-being, I was not actually a. drunk by myself or b. riding the tube alone while drunk.)

And that’s been my long weekend! Tomorrow my class is touring the National in the early evening, but I’ll probably figure out something to do on my own before I have to go there.

Until next time, cheerio! :)

The Beggar’s Opera

Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, July 14

First let me say that this space is actually gorgeous. The theater is in Queen Mary’s Garden in Regent’s Park and the stage is surrounded by this really lush greenery and pretty trees as a backdrop, it’s an amazing performance space and until the sun goes down they use the natural light outside which is awesome.

Now, the play…I have personally never really “gotten” 18th-19th century literature and theater for the most part, British or American really, but particularly British literature from this time period. The whole play is basically a giant commentary on the political goings-on of the early 1700s, and it’s meant to be taken largely as satire. However, I just couldn’t get behind it. Macheath, played in this production by the gym-sculpted David Caves, is a womanizing lothario who marries Polly Peachum (Flora Spencer-Longhurst) and then proceeds to cheat on her with every woman that he comes across. Despite Caves’ natural charm and impressive chest, I just couldn’t become involved with Macheath or be bothered to care about his story.

The style of writing in general just didn’t jive with me, and I found myself to be bored through most of the performance even though the production itself was pretty good. The director made good use of the space, and had actors emerging from trees and bushes and exiting by running off into the wilderness beyond the stage. The production also made use of a very large set of gallows that were used in the final moments of the play to “hang” various wrongdoers in a rather macabre fashion. After the “hanging,” the actors came back to life and danced while still hanging from the gallows. It was an interesting choice that isn’t actually present in John Gay’s script, and I’m not sure it’s one I was a fan of; it seemed out of line with the tone of the rest of the production, and while I realize that that was probably purposeful, it was very jarring and an odd way to end the evening.

Richard III

The Old Vic, July 16

The seats that we had for this production were actually the most uncomfortable seats I’ve ever had, including standing for 3 hours to watch Dr. Faustus. I couldn’t get comfortable for the entire 3.5 hours this play takes, and I suspect that explains a lot of why it was something I didn’t generally enjoy. Kevin Spacey was playing Richard III, and I found myself wishing that Sam Mendes, the director, had reined him in a little bit. It seemed like a very self-indulgent and self-aware performance to me, and I honestly expected better from Spacey. This production was part of The Bridge Project, which puts on productions of Shakespeare with American and British actors. I saw their production of The Tempest at BAM last year, and I was fairly unimpressed with that as well, though I know they’ve done very good productions in the past.

Spacey also seemed to be acting in a different play than the rest of the actors; compared to the delicious restraint of actors like Haydn Gwynne (who I’ve adored since I saw her in Billy Elliot, and who I was more excited about seeing in this than Spacey to be honest), his performance seemed outlandish and at times almost comical.

The physical production reminded me a lot of what was done with the Patrick Stewart version of Macbeth (a far superior production of Shakespeare, imo). There were a lot of offices, long tables, and stark white lighting. In general, the appearance of the production was very cold, clinical, metallic, and spare, which honestly made Spacey’s grandiose performance seem more out of place than ever. I was also really bothered by the use of projections in this production; it was more distracting than helpful, and there was a drop shadow effect used that really made me nuts.

Overall, not my favorite thing but not my least favorite that we’ve seen so far.

Pygmalion

Garrick Theatre, July 18

This production cut out a fair amount of scenes, which made Eliza’s transformation less a journey and more an instantaneous, seemingly painless and seamless transition. They were also incredibly focused on making the piece a pure comedy, which it isn’t; there are comedic moments, to be sure, but there needs to be a fine, delicate balance between the drama and the comedy for the piece to be effective. For me, the only scene where everything seemed to come together was the drawing room scene where Eliza meets Freddy and Clara and Mrs. Eynsford-Hill and Mrs. Higgins, because that’s pure comedy.

Rupert Everett as Henry Higgins was very detached and towering; he’s extremely tall and imposing, and he seemed to be watching over the proceedings almost as a judge of sorts. He was a much gruffer Henry Higgins than Leslie Howard in the 1938 (?) film, and also rougher than Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, the musical adaptation of Pygmalion that at points works better than the play itself. The songs, particularly the ones for Henry Higgins, give the characters much-needed depth and allows them to express their inner thoughts that Shaw’s language, beautiful as it is, doesn’t explicitly outline. I missed “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” in particular; that song really humanizes Henry and makes it clear that he really does care for Eliza, something that can be present or not present in Pygmalion depending on the portrayal of Henry Higgins.

Diana Rigg was a standout as Mrs. Higgins; she is a real grande dame of the British stage, and she seemed incredibly at ease and grounded. This was especially pronounced in contrast to Kara Tointon (making her West End debut as Eliza), who often seemed very uncomfortable, not just as a character choice in the world of the play, but moving around the stage as well.

I found this production enjoyable, even though there were elements of it that didn’t work 100 percent.

Betrayal

Comedy Theatre, July 19

Most of the people in my class really did not like this play, but I loved it. Kristin Scott Thomas stars as Emma, a woman who has betrayed her husband Robert (Ben Miles) by having a 7-year affair with his best friend Jerry (Douglas Henshall). The play travels backward in time, beginning in 1977, 2 years after the breakup of Emma and Jerry’s affair, and ending in 1968 at the very beginning of their adulterous relationship.

Pinter is a playwright known for his silences; a lot of the really interesting things in Betrayal are the things that remain unsaid, that are in between the lines being said or just aren’t being said at all. All three of the actors in the production handled these extended silences expertly. They were volatile, unstable silences bursting with things that had been left unsaid for a long time.

The difference in Emma’s relationship with each man was clearly pronounced. In her scenes with Robert, it was clear that there was some violence between them (Robert, in an early speech, makes reference to having hit Emma, perhaps more than once or even a few times) and that she was a little afraid of him. When she told him of her affair with Jerry and he grabbed her wrist, she was cowering and shrinking on the bed; it was honestly uncomfortable to watch, because it was unclear whether he indeed was going to strike her. Her relationship with Jerry has volatility of a different stripe. They spar with words, not with fists, and the gaps in their speech say as much or more than what actually leaves their mouths. They have the ability to hurt each other deeply and love each other deeply by turns.

A lot of Betrayal is also people sitting around talking about doing things rather than actually doing them. Often, this type of writing bores me, but in this case, it excited me. All three actors were brilliant, and Pinter’s command of language is masterful and kept me interested throughout the whole play. In this production, there were projections that said the year in which each scene takes place. In this case, unlike Richard III, they did not bother me; rather, they enhanced my understanding of the world of the play.

This was definitely one of my favorite things we’ve seen so far, and it’s a show that leaves a lot open to interpretation, which is always interesting to me.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Theatre Royal Haymarket, July 20

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever hated a writer as much as I hate Tom Stoppard. I had the great displeasure of sitting through an entire performance of part one of The Coast of Utopia about 4 or 5 years ago, a play that was fairly universally praised by critics and one which delved into obscure Russian philosophy and history without explanation and with an assumption that the audience already had a base of language on the subject (a pretty hefty assumption, in my opinion).

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern has a much less obscure basis: it focuses on two minor characters (who still manage to play a pivotal role) from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Rosencrantz (Samuel Barnett) and Guildenstern (Jamie Parker), as Stoppard writes them, are inept, confused, and little more than fools who sit around musing on the existential crises of their small lives. There’s a lot here about the meaning of life and the meaning of death, subjects that have been explored by innumerable playwrights and authors. The difference with Stoppard, however, is that he takes two and a half hours to say what another, more concise and efficient playwright could say in around ten minutes. Is it really necessary for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to have these lengthy diatribes about God-knows-what? The answer, for me at least, is a resounding no.

The production itself is well-conceived and directed by Trevor Nunn, but Stoppard is just not a writer I’ve ever been able to make myself like. I find his style to be circuitous, pompous, pretentious, and self-serving, as though he feels the need to prove that he knows more than the average person who will see these plays. While I was able to understand what was going on here, unlike in Coast of Utopia, I still detested the writing.

I have no objection to wordy playwrights if their wordiness has a clear point; Kushner’s Angels in America, a 7-hour epic, is my favorite play. The difference between Kushner and Stoppard, at least to me, is that the characters in Kushner who speak in elevated language have a reason to do so. The Angel is a character from another world, and so she speaks like a subject of God would perhaps be expected to speak. Harper, a character who mostly lives in other worlds in her own imagination, speaks in a great deal of metaphors and twisted lies, but she is not entirely of the grounded, real world. I personally have just never understood Stoppard’s use of language. I know some people find him brilliant, but as much as I have tried to like him, I can’t help but hate his style and pomposity.

So there you have it, a week’s worth of theatregoing in merry old England.

I’d write more about what I’ve been doing besides going to the theater, but this is already a giant wall of text, so I’ll leave it here for now. I’m planning on seeing Journey’s End and/or War Horse this weekend and I have tickets for Road Show at the Menier Chocolate Factory next weekend, so I will definitely be blogging about those things when I see them.

Otherwise, until next time…cheerio! (yes, people actually say that here and I love it.)

The stage of Shakespeare’s Globe before Dr. Faustus, 7.12.11

The gorgeous Victoria Palace Theatre before Billy Elliot, 7.13.11

The stage of the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park before The Beggar’s Opera, 7.14.11

My friend Claudia and me in our 3-D glasses before the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, 7.15.11

So first up, on Tuesday afternoon, we toured Shakespeare’s Globe and went to the Globe Museum. The theater is a reproduction of the original Globe Theatre from Shakespeare’s day, though it’s not on the actual site of the first Globe. We were shown the best seats in the house (the 2nd tier in the center), and we were also shown the Queen’s Box and what it might be like to be a groundling, also known as one who stands on the ground to watch an entire Shakespeare play. While our tour was going on, some of the actors from their production of Much Ado About Nothing were doing a sound check on the stage, also known as shouting their lines to make sure they could be heard throughout the theater.

We also had an adventure trying to get to the restaurant we were having our group dinner at, Wagamama (yes, that’s the actual name). There are apparently two Wagamamas sort of near the Globe, but people on the street seemed to only know of one of them, which was not the one we were told to meet our professor at. After an hour of walking, we finally found the restaurant, but it wasn’t so much a group dinner as the 10 of us who were lost trying to wolf down our food because we were all starving at that point. Ridiculous. But the food was yummy!

There was a mix-up with our tickets and so most of us had to be groundlings for Dr. Faustus that night. We lined up fairly early and so 5 of the 7 of us who had groundling tickets were at the very front of the stage for the show. As for the play, I’ve always liked comedies from that era better than the tragedies, with the exception of Macbeth, which if done well is amazing (see: the Patrick Stewart version). The play is about 3 hours long and gets quite repetitive, but the production was really well-done. At the Globe, they tend to stick closer to the Elizabethan way of doing theater, so all the actors were in period costumes and there were minimal props and set pieces. It was quite different than the production of Much Ado that we saw at Wyndham’s Theatre, which was fascinating. By the end, I was definitely getting tired of standing…3 hours on your feet, even leaning against a stage, is hard. The one part of Faustus that really fascinated me was an exchange toward the end of the play, in which Dr. Faustus (Paul Hilton) is asking Mephestopheles (Arthur Darvill) questions that Mephestopheles has promised to answer truthfully. Faustus asks Mephestopheles who created the world, and Mephestopheles refuses to answer because he won’t say anything that goes against the teachings of Lucifer. Faustus is an academic, and especially because of the time period, the science vs. religion debate that may be present here fascinates me. Marlowe was a complicated, educated man, and God and religion are also hugely present in his work, certainly moreso than in Shakespeare. I brought this part up in class and my professor said he didn’t want to dwell on it too much, but it’s something that interested me, maybe because of the way my mind works. It was the one idea in the play that I latched onto with any sort of interest, and it’s a theme that is present throughout and is summarized in that one exchange.

On Wednesday night, two of my friends wanted to try to see Wicked, but we got to the theater too late for them to get day seats. I had already bought my ticket for Billy Elliot that night, so I wound up trekking to Victoria on my own, which I actually really loved. Not that I haven’t been enjoying spending time with the friends I’ve made, but I explore New York City all the time on my own and I really loved the quietness of being alone in this big, amazing city. I’ve seen Billy 8 times on Broadway, and it was really interesting for me to a. see it so close up (I got the last day seat, and I was in the very first row of the stalls) and b. compare the two productions. The show runs around 2 hours and 40 minutes in New York with a 15 minute intermission, and in London it runs about 3 hours with a 20 minute intermission. Fifteen minutes of material may not seem like a lot, but having seen the show so many times, I was able to catch everything that had been changed and it was really interesting to see what they chose to take out and what they chose to keep. A lot of the cursing, especially the children cursing, was cut for Broadway. The Brits in general seem to be far more open than we are about profanity and alcohol and lots of other things…you can buy alcohol literally EVERYWHERE here. But I’ve gone off track, haha. The scene in between “The Stars Look Down” and “Shine” was also quite different than it is in New York…I’m not sure why it was changed, but it works well both ways. The video at the front end of the show that plays on the scrim is also much shorter on Broadway than it is in London. Many of the references to British personalities were also removed and replaced with more recognizable names for US audiences…a lot of the time when people were mentioned, I had no idea who they were because they were never as popular in the US as they were in Britain. I also noticed that the clothes (both the actual ones and the dancing ones) during “Expressing Yourself” were…much more attractive than the ones on Broadway. As in, they weren’t all hideously ugly as they are in the production here. Also not sure why that was altered, as the scene makes more sense this way because the clothes, while very ’80s, are still fashionable rather than dowdy and dull.

The audition for the Royal Ballet School is also changed pretty drastically; on Broadway, a recorded voice speaks and Billy is shown doing some shaky movement and the curtain comes down for the scene between his dad and the attendant/the male ballet dancer. In London, the panel of judges is actually shown, and there’s a whole bit with Billy pulling the tape with his audition music out of his pocket and having to re-wind the tape as it’s come out. They then show him starting his dance, and the tape starts to unwind again and he does some shaky movement and then the curtain comes down for the scenes with Billy’s dad.

Scott McKenzie was on as Billy and I’m not sure if it’s just because I was sitting so close, but he’s definitely the best actor I’ve seen in the part. He’s also an incredible tap dancer, probably the second strongest I’ve seen after Trent Kowalik, and his “Angry Dance” was amazing and he did the full tapping for it, which was awesome.

I’ve also come to realize that, no matter how talented they are, no one is ever going to be as good as Carole Shelley is as Grandma. That woman has some of the best comedic timing I’ve ever seen, and she wrings a laugh out of basically every line she has in that show.

Genevieve Lemon played Mrs. Wilkinson, and I really enjoyed her performance. She’s definitely one of the more abrasive Mrs. Wilkinsons I’ve seen, but it makes it all the more touching when she allows herself to show emotion and really convey that she cares for Billy.

Martin Marquez and Tom Lorcan were also both fantastic as Dad and Tony respectively (Tom Lorcan is also quite easy on the eyes, just saying). British actors in general tend to be far more subdued than American actors, and for this show, it really works. Both of them were incredibly touching and real, and Tony’s arc was the clearest I’ve ever seen it. They had both very obviously changed and grown by the end of the play, and it was really lovely to get to experience such nuanced, subtle acting up close.

I definitely cried during “The Letter” and “Once We Were Kings”…the last few times I’ve seen this show it’s hit me really hard emotionally and I’m not entirely sure why. I love it, though, and I’m so glad I got to see it while I was here. It’s definitely one of my favorite shows ever, and I kind of wish more people loved it like I do because it really is amazing.

I was going to write about The Beggar’s Opera and Harry Potter things in this, but I’m exhausted and I’m going to go take a nap and also this is already incredibly long so I’ll finish up writing later.

Wall of text over now.