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.

Westminster Abbey

As this blog post was a competition, I had actually done a bit of research to help me try and locate the graves of actors who are buried in Westminster Abbey.  Yes, I am way too competitive.  Much to my dismay, however, you could not take pictures, making it hard to complete this competition.  The list of actors that I had came from a filtered search on the official Westminster Abbey website.  Some of these graves were unmarked, but I was going to do my best to locate the cloisters in which they resided.  The list that I composed consisted of:

Peggy Ashcroft - Poet's Corner
Spranger Barry -North Cloister (unmarked)
Thomas Betterton - East Cloister (unmarked)
Barton Booth - South Transept
Anne Bracegirdle - East Cloister
Susanna Cibber - North Cloister
Noel Coward - South Choir Aisle
Samuel Foote - West Cloister
David Garrick - Poet's Corner
John Henderson - Poet's Corner
Henry Irving - Poet's Corner
Ben Jonson - Poet's Corner
John Philip Kemble - Chapel of St. Andrew
Ann Oldfield - South aisle of the nave
Laurence Olivier - South Transept
Hannah Pritchard - Poet's Corner
Sarah Siddons - North Transept
Sybil Thorndike - South Choir Aisle

I was only able to snag one picture.

Waiting for Godot

I'm writing this coming off a huge emotional high, so bear with me if this is a jumbled mess.  The European premiere of the Entourage movie was in Leicester Square, and Khalan and I had spots on the rail of the red carpet.  Now, to normal people, this wouldn't be a huge deal, but to me, this was awesome.  I've seen all eight seasons of the actual show, a show that ran from 2004-2011, TWICE.  That is a ton of time in front of the television, but I can say with 100% certainty that this is my favorite series of all time.  AND I JUST GOT TO SEE THE ACTUAL ACTORS.  Please excuse my fan-girling, it is quite embarrassing.

Waiting for Godot, performed by the Sydney Theatre Company, was a very entertaining show.  Although it dragged on a little too long for my liking, I did think the two main actors were very talented and played their respective characters very well.  In my opinion, based upon the viewing of the show and the audience's reaction, this portrayal of Beckett's script was a funny tragedy. 

The dialogue of the show was absolutely hilarious.  Hugo Weaving (Vladimir) and Richard Roxburgh (Estragon) delivered their lines in a way that worked to bring out the meaning of the play, but it also was entertaining.  Their stage chemistry was unbelievable! Even when Weaving would reply, "waiting for Godot," to Roxburgh's questioning, "When can we go?" was hilarious.  The way that they pranced around the stage had me (and most of the audience, for that matter) rolling with laughter.  Even the smaller roles of Pozzo and Lucky were funny.  The body language and motions of Lucky were quite entertaining.  I laughed really hard in the second act when Pozzo and Lucky came out and just collapsed over each other. 

However, I don't feel that the director wanted us to think of this play as funny.  I think he wanted us to realize that the situation Didi and Gogo were in was very sad and much more deep that what was shown on the surface.  I understood it to be a tragic play with some funny dialogue, and I think the audience had the same reaction.  It was very indicative that the play was supposed to be serious when the ending was very somber and without laughter.  That was the impression the director wanted to leave us, ultimately making it a funny tragedy. 

To Market, To Market

I love food.  It is what it is.  I'm a pretty picky eater, especially when it comes to green vegetables, but I will say that I have become a bit more adventurous as I've gotten to college.  When first signing up to study abroad, I was encouraged to step out of my comfort zone and try the local food.  There has been no better food in London than what I have eaten from Borough Market.  There's no other place I really want to eat right now.  I have had a few meals there now, all different things, and there is still so much that I want to try after walking through.  I could spend every pound I have in there and not even think twice about it. 

Just walking into the place is an experience.  The first time we went, it was during lunch time and you could hardly take a step.  It was unbelievably packed.  This is undoubtedly a product of the location of the market, but also of the great options you can get there.  I was in shock at what variety they had there.  EVERYTHING looked good.  There was pork, fish, burgers, steaks, ribs, salt beef, duck, chicken, and any other kind of meat you can think of.  They had any kind of fruits and veggies and any kind of cheese (the whole cheese wheels).  You want cheese cake? Cookies? You got it.  What do you want to drink?  You know they have everything when they will actually sell you ICED TEA. 

At the current moment, I have had a pork sandwich with some fancy name for lettuce and barbeque sauce, a salt beef sandwich, and a duck confit wrap (picture above).  I can without a doubt say that the duck confit wrap was one of the best things I have ever eaten, and I will have another one before we leave.  On top of that, I have had a piece of half-chocolate-half-regular cheesecake with a brownie crust.  I think I'll have another one of those as well. 

Unfortunately, there were no buskers out that day at the market, which is understandable because of the magnitude of the crowd.  Nonetheless, Borough Market, you have my heart. 

The Beaux' Stratagem

What. A. Show.

Last night, we watched The Beaux' Stratagem at the National Theatre.  I could not stop laughing the entire time.  I may be a little biased because this play was the one that I analyzed in our pre-departure sessions, but this was the best show that we have seen thus far in London.  It was awesome to see this already outrageous story played out in an even more outrageous way on the stage.  The acting was fantastic and brought out the comedy in the language in every way possible.  Even Scrub, a filler character in the text, was absolutely hilarious on stage.  Though they steered away from the script just a bit, the modernization of what direction they went and the music they chose was just fantastic. 

One element of the scenic design that I thought made the show even more tremendous was the lighting.  I loved the way that even though the set (for the most part) was the same for the Inn and Lady Bountiful's house, they used different brightness and color of light to help distinguish between the two.  The Inn was much more dimly lit in a yellow light while Lady Bountiful's house was lit in bright white light.  Even when the scene was not switching from one place to the other, the way the lights so subtly dimmed in and out was wonderful.  The lights definitely directed the eyes of the audience in a play where characters were performing on three different levels with multiple doorways.  It made the play easy to follow and made the transitions seamless.

The lighting especially added to the comedy of the play when the musicians would enter the scene on the third level of the set.  A single musician would enter with their instrument, and the lighting would fade in on them, followed by enormous laughter from the audience.  Yes, the language of the play was funny, but those scenes would not have been near as funny if the single musician had not be singled out by the light.  

One other thing I caught with the lights was that both the beginning and end of the show were done the exact same way.  The first light we saw was a single beam from directly above the stage that showed a violinist at the very top of the set.  At the end of the show, we saw the same single beam of light from directly above shining down on the same violinist as she played by herself.  The play opened with a fade in of the light and closed with it fading out.  It was a great way to end the play, and I really hope more people caught it than me. 

I would recommend that performance of The Beaux' Stratagem to anyone.  

Two Days in Stratford

Over the last two nights, we saw two plays at the Royal Shakespeare Company's Swan Theatre in Stratford upon Avon: The Jew of Malta and Love's Sacrifice.  Both were very entertaining and intense.  It was interesting to see these plays because they feature very interesting female characters that are played by females, something that was not done in the Renaissance era very often. 
The role of Abigail in The Jew of Malta and the role of Fiormanda in Love's Sacrifice were two critical characters in each of their respective plays. 

Abigail, the daughter of the main character, Barabas, leaves her father and her Jewish faith to become a Christian nun after she learns of her unintentional involvement in her father's revenge plot.  She is then killed by her father and his slave, Ithamore, when they introduced poison into the nunnery.  Her performance of Abigail was very innocent and harmless, but it worked so well with the play because it helped contrast the evilness of her father.  I do think that this role could have been played by a young boy because a young boy could have played a very credible innocent role.  However, I don't think that a young boy could have portrayed a beautiful woman, so it might have taken away from the plot a bit when Barabas uses her to pit two men against each other. 

Fiormanda, the evil sister of the Duke, informs her brother that his duchess, Bianca, has been unfaithful with his dear friend, Fernando, out of spite because of her own adoration for Fernando.  She and D'Avolos, her servant, stayed in the Duke's ear about Fernando and Bianca until he eventually kills Bianca and then himself.  She was very fittingly wearing all black during the entire show, contrasted with Bianca's all white during the entire show.  The whole play would not have been the same if Fiormanda had been played by a young boy.  There is absolutely no way that a young boy could have had a scowl and tone of voice so impactful.  It is also crucial that John Ford wrote this character as a female.  I do not think that the Duke would have listened to a male character, be it his brother or a close friend.  Evil male characters typically resort to violence in plays like this, and the fact that it was a female character who was cunning and behind the scenes adds to the credibility of the plot. 

Nonetheless, I'm ready for the plays we see to lighten up a bit.  These two were very deep and very intense!