Tea Time

It has been a few weeks since I have had tea time, but I can promise you that I was completely out of my element.  It was fancy and proper, which I can pretend to be, but I was quite uncomfortable.  We were acting very American and getting very snobbish looks from the high society aristocrats of the English empire.  Nonetheless, I definitely loved having that experience.  I got to be a stereotypical Brit for a little over an hour (even though we were so obviously American it was embarrassing).  I actually ended up liking the tea!  It had nothing on good ole' home style southern sweet tea, but it smelled amazing and really did not taste that bad.  I liked it better without the milk in it. 

The Importance of Being Earnest was one of my favorite shows that we saw.  It was absolutely hilarious.  Tea time and tea time food in this play was very important because it helped reinforce the themes of high society and the importance and perception of it.  The characters had several conversations over tea time food that allowed the plot of the play to continue.  It was an important part of high society, and it allowed the audience to see the stark contrast between Cecily, who lived in the country, and Gwendolyn, who was a snobbish member of high society.  I also think that the muffins may have been a euphemism for something sexual, but that was just a feeling that I took away after seeing the play.  This would make sense considering that the entire plot of the play was about getting these two women to marry the men eating the muffins. 

Since this is my last blog post and our last night here, I just wanted to say that it has been an absolute blast.  I'm really glad that I got to meet everyone, and I'm very thankful that a bunch of weird actors (and Candace and Michele) took me in as part of the gang.  Thanks for everything Vivian and Shawn!

Scavenger Hunt

I've always thought (and been told) that my twin brother and I would be great at The Amazing Race, the reality show on CBS where they race across the world.  The only reason that we would never win the $1 million prize is that I have terrible luck.  My taxi would blow out a tire 400 miles away from help in sub-Saharan Africa.  I told Candace and Michele, my partners in crime for this, that if they worked with me, we would no doubt win this scavenger hunt. As it turned out, my luck caught up with us in the end. Needless to say, I'm angry about it, but I guarantee you that no other group had more fun and more success finding all of the clues and navigating the city.  If it wasn't for the snitch...........

Our plan was to find everything and complete the snitch task. Here is all of the items on the list:

Van Gogh's The Sunflower (the real thing was not displayed because of a strike going on, but this was at the National Gallery gift shop)

 Rothko's Seagram Murals

 Abbey Road

Black Velvet cocktail at The Victoria pub and peaking to a former Cambridge cricket player about cricket (I could not upload the video because of technical difficulties, but see Candace and Michele's blogs.)

 Outside London's oldest bookshop (my vote is a lower picture)

Ben Franklin's plaque (it isn't blue, but the official blue plaque website confirmed this is his plaque)

Sherlock Holmes hat

 Mango Lassi

EVERY EEL PLACE WE WENT TO WAS OUT OF EEL AND THIS WAS THE FINAL SHOP AND I WAS SO MAD AFTER SEARCHING ALL THIS TIME SO THIS WAS THE RESULT.  THIS IS THE ONLY REASON WE LOST. (Bad grammar used for effective rant, but I was fully expecting to choke down the entire thing and win by completing every task and eating the eel.  Much like the Amazing Race possibility, I lost because of poor luck.)

 Ramses Bust

 Andromeda and Perseus

 My vote for the best novel of the past 200 years (yes i submitted it)

 Speakers Corner

 Oil painting of William Shakespeare

 Resting place of James Burbage

I am satisfied with the results of this scavenger hunt because I did everything that I could do to win.  I've checked myself a couple of times, but if I left off a picture of one of the tasks, it is not because I didn't go find every single thing.  Bad luck haunts me again.  I guess it just wasn't meant to be. 

The Seagull

Last night, we viewed The Seagull at Regent's Open Air Theatre in Regents Park.  Viewing a play outdoors was quite a different experience than sitting in a theatre.  The audience is exposed to all of the elements, and it got quite cold once the sun really started going down.  It also very lightly sprinkled at a few moments, leaving me in a panic because I was without a rain jacket.  There was also more natural distractions, such as birds, planes, helicopters, and men playing a game that could be heard off in the distance. 

Despite all of that, I really do think that being outside enhanced the quality of the set, specifically the first hour or so of the play before the interval.  The first half of the play was written to be outside by Anton Chekhov.  It is set in a field in the Ukrainian countryside right next to a beautiful lake.  Many theatres companies could stage this (and have staged this) in traditional indoor venues, but I think being outside allowed the audience to get a truer picture of Chekhov's vision for that action.  Parts of the set involved real trees and real water.  It gave the play a higher level of credibility to have these real elements in play with the set. 

On the contrast, the entire set after the interval was meant to be inside the house that sits on the land that was staged in the first part of the production, so one can argue that this took away from those sets.  I actually think it did take away from those sets because if staged inside, the set could have included walls and doors, and I thought there was something missing last night.  Having said that, I think the director did a very good job with what he was working with.  In the final scene of the play where Konstantin blocks the "door" with all of the chairs, there really is no door to block, and it is quite obvious that the characters can walk around this "barrier."  I loved the decision to leave Konstantin on stage watching his work burn in the trash bin by the desk while the other characters were walking throughout the room looking for him.  That visual, along with the sound effects you heard, was a perfect way to give the audience the effect that there was a door that was blocked, but it also gave us the effect of Konstantin's burning work and his despair or anger for it. 

I thought the play was fairly good for what it is, but overall, I just do not like that story.  I think it is quite boring.  It was definitely a good experience to see a play in an open air outdoor theatre. 

Fringe Theatre

My strategy for fringe theatre here in London was to ride Michele and Candace's coattails to a show that they did the research for and thought that they would like.  It worked to absolute perfection, as the show we saw was one of the better shows that we have seen in all of our trip here, called Violence and Son.  I did not know what to expect at all, and then when we walked into the theatre, I was so intrigued.  We were sitting in your classic white trash lawn furniture!  The stage was "in the round," meaning that the audience surrounded the stage on all sides.  It would shock me if I was told that the theatre could hold more than 50 people too.  Everything that I had learned and perceived about theatre up to this point with the larger shows that we have seen was challenged before the actors even entered the room. 

When the show started, I was so confused because I have never watched Doctor Who before.  All of the transition points in the show were somewhat inside of the main character, Liam's, head.  They allowed us to see his imagination and his innocence, which at the end of the show came to a fascinating, symbolic conclusion.  While inside the character's head in a transition point where he was offstage, upstairs in bed with Jen (it is implied they had sex), we see hundreds of small action figures and toys fall from the ceiling and litter the entire room.  This was symbolic of his innocence and childhood crashing to the ground, and it really showed the audience that all of the transition points in the show leading up to that point were symbolic of his mental state throughout the play. 

The action with the other characters as well was wonderful.  The father, nicknamed Violence (hence, the title of the show), was an alcoholic who abused his Liam, his son.  Violence's girlfriend, Suze, was a cringe-worthy character, from her entrance on stage after an off-stage sexual orgasm, to her blatant attempt to cover up the violence of Violence towards his son.  The show was a wonderful production that tackled issues such as domestic abuse, single parenting, alcoholism, and blurred lines.  I left the show shaken a bit and in deep thought about some of the situations were presented.  I would recommend this show to anyone old enough to understand these difficult themes and hear some very crude language. 

Bend It Like Beckham

Bend It Like Beckham was the first West End production that we saw as a group, and it was only the second big West End/Broadway that I have ever seen.  I am a bit spoiled because the other show that I have seen of this magnitude was The Book of Mormon, which is arguably the most critically acclaimed show playing in all of London.  I can without a doubt say that Bend It Like Beckham was not near as good as The Book of Mormon, but it was very entertaining nonetheless. 

The major thing that stood out to me about Bend It Like Beckham was the lights.  I might be a bit biased after the lighting designer spoke to us about the show and gave us a small tour of the stage, but I really thought the lights made the production actually bearable.  The show was very visually appealing.  It was very bright and colorful and easy to look at.  I absolutely loved the parts of the show where the lights on the seven triangular swiveling set pieces were the red and white stripes of Manchester United.  Having said this, I will say that it is probably hard to light a show that just is not very good, so I give kudos to the lighting designer.  I think he was hinting at the show being pretty poor in our discussion, but I do think that the visual production was well done. 

As far as the music, sound effects, and the storyline goes, I thought it was pretty poor.  The storyline was weak and very flat, and it seemed as though the director tried to cover up the shallowness of it with this huge production.  I felt like the bright, shiny lights and cheesy show tunes were a facade for the lack of character development and plot action.  That is one major difference with this West End show that we haven't seen in the other shows.  Shows and plays at the National Theatre and other non West End theatres actually have a plot and dynamic characters that the audience can get invested in.  They have themes that can teach the audience something or challenge their thoughts.  This show had none of that, and that is why it sucked. 

The Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum was a museum that was quite different than any other museum I had been in before.  It felt more like a department store than a traditional museum, with exhibits from the 1500's and exhibits from just a decade ago right beside each other.  It was quite interesting though, and there were two areas of the museum that stood out to me: the architecture exhibit and the glass exhibit.  I had never been to a museum with these two types of exhibits, and they were both fascinating. 

The architecture exhibit had tons of fascinating model buildings and information about a wide range of cities across the world.  It featured the Parthenon in Athens all the way up to the bullet shaped building here in the financial district of the City of London.  I have always loved buildings and skylines, so this exhibit was extremely cool to go through and read.  The glass exhibit was also really interesting.  It is one thing to know how glass sculptures are blown and made, but it is an entirely new thing to see what neat objects can be made through that process.  There were objects in this exhibit that had so much fluidity that they looked like jelly fish, but they were made of glass.  It was awesome to see the different objects the museum had on display. 

One object in the glass section reminded me of one of the key subplots of The Beaux Stratagem: a large wine glass.

Please ignore Michele, as she just couldn't resist making a face in a picture (see 80% of the pictures that she took this trip).  This very large wine glass represents the large amount of alcohol that could be drank out of it, something that Mr. Sullen frequently did in The Beaux Stratagem.  Although Sullen's drinking was a huge character flaw, without it, he would have never caused Mrs. Sullen's unhappiness, and Archer would have never had a chance of getting with her and sealing his fortune.  Her horrible marriage was a key element to the plot of the entire play, and can be directly attributed to her husband's alcoholism.  Although Mrs. Sullen was very beautiful, it was obvious that Mr. Sullen (and even Archer, at first) was more interested in her fortune than her.  I think the glass can also represent that fact, that the outer beauty of it was not as important to them as what the beauty could contain, the fortune.  It makes the audience second guess the motives of the men around Mrs. Sullen (which if you weren't already second guessing, then you didn't understand the play at all). 

Also at the V&A, we saw some tri-fold exhibits on one of the lower floors (I'm kicking myself because I didn't take a picture).  I made an excellent joke about the song that Archer sang with Scrub about a trifle, which the director decided was so good that he/she made the end of the show as well. Nobody (Michele and Candace) appreciated that great bit of humor, so just as I did at the museum, I will show myself the door. 

Everyman

Carol Ann Duffy's translation of Everyman was very radical.  Her modern twist to this medieval script was unbelievable in language and production.  The visuals were truly amazing and engaging, while the language emphasized the modern importance and timelessness of the themes written about centuries ago. 

Coming into this play, I really did not know what to expect.  The script that we read in class was so bare and abstract that it was really hard to picture how this play could be put on the stage.  Combine that with the fact that at the time I had never seen a true theatrical production, I was completely baffled at what I was going to see.  Then, when the first part of the play is a lady sweeping the stage, I was just about ready to throw in the towel, but I stuck it out.  This play did not disappoint. 

It is quite the understatement to say that there are significant cuts or re-arrangements of the text in the production.  The ENTIRE script was modernized.  Everyman was being thrown a huge birthday bash with his friends, full of alcohol and drugs.  Not known until later in the play but visualized very early, Everyman falls from the roof while intoxicated and perishes.  The onstage theatrics were unbelievable.  From the time the audience sees Everyman falling in slow motion into the huge pit on the stage, to the loud music and over-the-top silver statues, the production was very visually appealing.  The use of the LED screen and the ability to see behind the LED screen with different lighting was amazing!  Nothing about this play felt as if it was old. 

The language in this modernization put a huge emphasis on the fact that Everyman could not take his material possessions, which he loved most, into his reckoning with God.  The material possessions took an entire scene of the play for itself, full of credit cards and shiny statues in front of golden graphics on the LED screen.  I think Carol Ann Duffy was trying to emphasize this above all in the play.  Material possession is a huge theme in today's society, and I think Duffy wanted to challenge that thinking and prioritization with this play.  Other language modifications included references to modern day pop songs, with one of the characters saying they were "all about that base, bout that base, no treble." I can't remember the use of the F-word in the medieval version of this script either, so I will have to say she added that in there too. 

My favorite modernization of the play was her use of Death.  I loved the ending of the play when death pointed out to the crowd and said "eenie meenie miney moe."  I thought that tied the entire thing together and allowed her to make the point that Everyman represented every single person in the room.  This play applies to us, and we should evaluate it seriously, and I think her use of the character Death tied in that fact. 

I enjoyed Everyman very much.