This is a long one as you may have guessed, get ready and feel free to jump around. Right, sorry, again. Because of my current yet strange illness I have simply not wanted to blog about anything because I felt like doing so would be cause me to become more fatigued or simply angry and my spelling and sentence structures may be off (of course they might be right now, but I can’t tell). Oh well, I am taking copious amounts of medication, hopefully something works. Moving on.
We last left off on this great adventure with a visit to the Olympic Venue on Friday morning. Well, it’s not much to look at right now, but the building is coming along nicely. Since we took a tour we were able to hear all about the whole process of getting the venues up and running. Since London first got the bid back in 2005 they spent two years on Research and Development, set goals to be met during the production, and sorted everything out. The amazing thing about the location is that it is in an otherwise run down and shabby part of London (we’re talking east of The City) and the area was so derelict and decrepit that no one would really touch it. But the Olympic committee did. They decided to pick a place that desperately needed some attention and dedicated over 90% of their budget (I think) to the establishment of their Legacy, as in what can they do with the buildings after the Olympics has come and gone. Also this will end up being the greenest games (except for probably the ancient games) ever. They have been using about 99% of the materials from the buildings they tore down to make way for the venue in other locations throughout the British Isles. They also set a goal of making sure that at least 50% of materials that are brought into the area are not brought in via truck or car (they’ve reached 51%), which means they use trains and even the river! Also the Olympic Village is going to be converted into apartments, a good portion of which will be affordable. PLUS they’re building a school that focuses on the arts and on sports and physical activity. Also they are using as much local workers and companies as they can to get everything built on time. The date that everything is expected to be finished, June of THIS year! Which gives them a whole year to make sure everything works. It’s really amazing what all their doing to ensure that everything is as green as possible and to ultimately ensure that the community benefits from it all.
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| Olympic Arena |
Aida at the Royal Opera House
The thing about opera is that if you took out all of the music and the epic dance sequences that happen, the story maybe takes about 2 minutes to retell. That being said, this production was so epic in scale and in talent of the performers that it is no wonder why people consider Opera to be the “highest” art form. The story is of an Ethiopian princess who is captured and enslaved by the Egyptians. Aida (the Ethiopian princess) falls in love with a soldier of the Egyptian army, he too falls in love with her. Although there is a complication, Amneires, the Egyptian Princess is already in love with the soldier (Radames). Radames is then promoted to general and forced to take up arms against the Ethiopian forces that are crossing into Egypt. While Radames is off at war, Amneries discovers that Aida really holds Radames’ affections. When Radames returns from war the Pharaoh promises Amneires to him and that he will then rule Egypt. Meanwhile, the Ethiopian’s have been captured and Aida’s father (the king) is with them. He then convinces Aida to use her influence with Radames to find out information on the Egyptian troops movement so that the Ethiopians can regain ground on them. Aida kind of agrees and tries to convince Radames to run away with her back to Etiopia where he can rule there and they can live happily ever after. Radames agrees and unfortunately lets slip where his troops are, Aida’s hears and then Radames is charged with treason. When he is on trial he remains silent and is sentenced to be buried alive. Inside his tomb he finds Aida waiting for him, she would rather die with him than live without him. And yes, they live (for a while I guess, I mean how long can you live in a tomb) in the tomb. (Yeah two minutes to read it, 3 and half hours to watch it)
The play was epic and the singers were amazing. There was a connection to human sacrifice which was both intriguing and kind of disturbing, but oh well. There’s not much else that can be said except for epic. I enjoyed it. Opera is opera though, and it’s pretty self-explanatory.
Saturday: Hamlet at the National Theatre’s Lyttleton with Rory Kinnear
I’ve never actually seen a full on, live production of Hamlet and this one sure didn’t disappoint. They took the idea of a tyrannical and watchful state of Elizabethan affairs and ran with it (Elizabeth liked spies and liked to know exactly what was happening in her Kingdom…. Queendom?). They set the piece in a modern day (almost totalitarian state) with CCTV cameras all around watching every move that every person makes, ever. This is actually similar to a production at the Royal Court in 1980 that I researched. Rory Kinnear’s performance was brilliant although I thought him a bit too old to be playing the Prince of Denmark (he played it older than I prefer, but that may have just been me.
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| Sky over London when we left the National |
Sunday: Portobello Road!
Went to Portobello Road! I really love this area of town, it’s lovely, quaint and has everything you may ever need! I was very good though and I didn’t end up buying anything (that day) but I still had a wonderful time hanging out with friends. I found a shop even that sold western attire. We are talking fringe, boots, lots of leather wear, and turquoise, lots and lots of turquoise. We all thought it a bit funny of course that when we go to England we go into the western shop and admire how much it reminds us of home (at least for me and my friend from Bosie). But it’s nice to have even the smallest reminder of home when you’re away, keeps you grounded a bit.
Monday: Acting Class, Back to Portobello and Moonlight by Harold Pinter
First acting class of the trip. Worked with Ex-Pat Kelly who runs her own company ISO Productions which she started after working with the Hampstead Theatre where she worked after she went to grad school. She phrased it the way I’d like my life to be phrased at some point, went to grad school and then just stayed, as you do. She had us do some scene work where we took a photograph and then formed a scene around that photo. Then we told someone a story based on an emotion, they told us one, then we had to take their story and tell it to someone else as if it had happened to us. Pretty interesting take on how to listen and embellish.
Okay so remember how I said I didn’t buy anything that day? Yeah that’s because I went back. I had been searching for a back pack for a while or at least some kind of bag I can use for weekend trips and when I go up to Scotland. Now my dilemma was to buy a nice bag that I can use for years to come, or to buy a cheap bag that I can use for this trip then dispose of if I need it. After consulting my bank account and my mother, I decided to go for the expensive one that I can use for years to come. So I bought a Troop London© Backpack. This is not a little backpack like the ones you had in high school either, oh no, it is a legitimate Backpacking Backpack (although I feel like it’s too heavy for too long of trips). It has leather trim that is genuine Italian leather, and the finest 100% cotton canvas. So expect to see me with a big brown canvas backpack soon and hopefully covered in patches from all the places I go in this life of mine.
Moonlight at the Donmar Warehouse. A friend pointed out to me that the Donmar must really like actors because the two shows that we have seen that came out of the Donmar have had some of the best acting we had ever seen. Moonlight tells the story of a man who is dying and his sons won’t come to his bedside. Without saying much of anything or having a strong plot line, it was still so intriguing. I can’t really go more into it because the whole play was so minimal but I found myself just staring at the actors who played the sons eyes. They told so much with their eyes alone; it was heartbreaking and cruel, but so intense that you had a hard time looking elsewhere. We even had the pleasure of meeting up with the actor who played the dying man, who was none other than David Bradley, (aka Argus Filch from the Harry Potter films). He was so nice too! Which is kind of funny considering Filch and the man in the play were both kind of asses. But he was great and told us how much fun he has been having doing the play and that we were one of the best audiences they had. In two weeks as well he is coming to our class to talk about things.
Tuesday: Kensington Palace and Brontë at the Tricycle in Kilburn
The only Royal Palace I have been to was the Tower of London, until today. I was lucky to get a great deal on the Royal Palaces tickets so I get into four (the Tower, Kensington, Hampton Court and Banqueting House) for about £25. So directly after class I left for Hyde Park. It was yet another gorgeous day in London, so my friends and I took advantage of it and decided to treat ourselves to tea at the Orangery. Now the Orangery is located right next to Kensington Palace and is so beautiful on its own that just by looking at it you know that you’re in for a big bill. Since we had been wanting to partake in a traditional afternoon tea we decided to splurge and got the Orange tea with a lovely little platter of finger snacks. It was so delicious (I even got a large glass of fresh squeezed lemonade) that we thought it would be work the £15.95 a person just for the tea, but to our surprise our waiter messed up our order and we only paid a total of £25 for all of us (there were three of us plus there was a large lemonade and a small iced tea). Pretty good deal if I do say so myself. After we ventured over to the Palace itself. Now this is still technically a royal residence and has famously housed seven princesses since it’s building under Mary Modena and expansion under William and Mary (17th century). Now the Palace is currently under renovation so there are things going on all around. But instead of simply closing the doors and not allowing visitors in, they just changed things around a bit. They now are telling the story of each of the seven Princesses and the lives that they lived. Each room is themed in some way around a poem that relates in some way to the Princess. Along the way there are paintings, artifacts, and strange stories (did you know that there was a “wild boy” that they found and kept as a pet? He was called Peter the Wild Boy and he lived with George I http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Wild_Boy) along with gorgeous gowns including an original Vivienne Westwood, Princess Margret’s wedding dress and one of Princess Di’s many dresses. All in all it was a wonderful day out.
Well, I’ve never seen a play that was based off of the Bronte sisters, nor have I seen a play that seemed to last as long as the subject’s novels. We were able to attend a pre play discussion with the playwright, the company director and the artistic director. From what I gathered from what they talked about, the playwright didn’t know nearly enough as she should have and that all of them were in love with Emily. Sitting there I wanted to like the play. I love things like that, plays or movies about female authors in a time that women didn’t write, let alone publish. But this play just fell flat for me. There wasn’t enough substance for the characters, plus there seemed to be a definite use of dramatic license that got on my nerves because I could defiantly tell when then happened even though I knew very very little about the Brontës to begin with. There were moments of beauty and something that made me think that it would be good, but alas it was a short lived moment of goodness, and it quickly plummeted back to boredom. Oh well, win some, loose some.
Wednesday: Acting with Imogene and Impro at the Comedy Store
I have never hurt for so long after doing something for a relatively short period of time. Imogene is all about physicality and movement, which I believe is a very important part of acting although I am far from being in the proper kind of shape for such kinds of physical activity. She had us moving for the better part of an hour and a half straight. Although it was really hard and I felt like I was about to collapse I was really happy that I did do it though. It was almost refreshing albeit painful as hell. I really must get better shoes, having no arches sucks.
Since it was such a physical day in class I came back, took a shower then did laundry as Thursday we left for Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Impro was great. Super funny and a good time was had by all.
Thursday: Stratford and Macbeth by RSC
We left at 9am for Stratford-Upon-Avon with a bus driver named Vince who proceeded to entertain us with his bits of knowledge and anecdotes about the area and about sheep. We stopped off at Mary Arden’s Farm which is the place where Shakespeare’s mother lived before she was married off to John Shakespeare. The farm actually consists of two properties, Mary Arden’s and their neighbor. It used to just be their neighboring property that was thought to belong to the Arden’s but further research that was done in the ‘90’s showed that the Arden house was next door to the one they had thought. So the Birthplace Trust bought it and now both the properties have been returned to look as they did during the Tudor period equipped with sheep, pigs, horses and people in the houses explaining many of the processes involved with running a successful house in the 16th century. It was a lovely day except for the insanely large group of annoying group of French middle schoolers. I can see why the Brits have a problem with the French.
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| Pretty Tulips at Anne Hathaway's "Cottage" |
Upon arriving in Stratford-on-Avon, we checked into our lovely little B&B and decided to go and find a park to lay in and soak up some rays. Since I had been there before I kind of knew my way around so I lead our little group of girls to the large “Recreation Grounds” right next to and across the river from the RSC theatres. Finding a large enough open spot in the grass was harder than we thought it would be. Everyone seemed to be out enjoying the sun. Of course if you were used to constant grey and rainy skies and you got a day with warm and sunny conditions, you can’t really blame them for all being out. Got some ice cream or at least some Mr. Whippy which is really just really cold cool whip and not really ice cream, but it was cold so it was just fine. Laid out in the grass for about an hour and played some very bad badminton but it was still lovely.
People are often superstitious about the saying the name of Macbeth in a theatre, I’m not one of them. But maybe the reason why it’s a “cursed” play is because no one can do a decent production of it, not even the RSC. Most people know the basic plot of the Scottish play so I won’t bore you with that only my take on this production. They tried to do a sort of “let’s have the set in the first act be all derelict and decrepit like Macbeth’s mind and then the second act will be how it looks to the rest of the world”. Which seems like a cool idea and the set was cool, but the production itself tried to use too many references that didn’t really work well enough together to be enjoyable. The performances, well, Mac-B was “pushing” as I overheard him say after the show, Lady M was just bad, Ross had an open eye problem and the witches were children, who were creepy as hell but they took too much out from the witch’s scenes for it to be necessary. I did like Macduff very much, he was very powerful and so crushed when he heard that his family was killed. They took too little out of scenes that needed to be edited down and too much out of interesting scenes. Not the greatest production in the world, but better than the other Macbeth I saw my high school do a few years ago, but not by much.
Friday: More Stratford and Cardenio
Found another park and watched a bunch of our group play some soccer/football, I laid out in the sun being rubbish at football myself. After a nice morning in the sun, a friend and I ventured into the heart of Stratford and went through Shakespeare’s Birthplace. It’s kind of silly because they have this sort of Disneyland/ Jurassic Park intro into the property where they have a video narrated by Patrick Stewart and some other woman whose voice I didn’t recognize talking about Bill’s life and his legacy and they had a first folio on display along with some other things that related to him in one way or another. The property itself is nice, they have it decorated as it may have looked and they have interpreters throughout willing to answer any questions you may have. They even go into depth about the property itself and how it was used in the past. For instance it wasn’t until the mid-18th century when people began to venture to Stratford in a sort of Pilgrimage to Shakespeare’s home. This is in part thanks to David Garrick (the actor) who was not only obsessed with Will but he also started an annual Shakespeare Jubilee that was held in Stratford in honor of the Bard. It was then that we begin to get guest books and writing graffiti on the walls and windows of people who had visited the property including Mark Twain, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. There is even actors in the courtyard performing Shakespeare, these are the people who wanted to get into the RSC but didn’t I assume.
The rest of the properties include John Nash’s house and New Place (the lot where Shakespeare’s last house was and his neighbor’s house) and Hall’s Croft (the home of Dr. Hall and Shakespeare’s daughter). The thing about New Place is that the actual building doesn’t exist anymore so now after hundreds of years they are doing excavations to find any artifacts from the 1600’s and finding the foundations of the original house. Maybe someday they’ll rebuild the house. Hall’s Croft belonged to the only doctor in the town of Stratford and h was married to one of Shakespeare’s daughters. The houses all had different information and were interesting their own rights, although the actual architectural things don’t differ much.
It is said that there are two “lost plays” of Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Won and Cardenio. There is no evidence that either of these plays were written except for being mentioned in book lists by a few different booksellers who sold the texts to the plays and a couple other mentions by others. Cardenio was believed to have been written by both Shakespeare and Fletcher (whom William was working with towards the end of his career) and was said to have been a story based off of a character in the Don Quixote story whom Don Quixote runs into and is crazed about something. Although there is no proof that the play ever existed or even that Shakespeare wrote it until the 18th century when a man named Lewis Theobald writes and performs a play called Double Falsehood which he claimed he based off of Shakespeare’s lost play. There had been a few amateur productions of Theobald’s play but it wasn’t until 1969 that someone sparked the debate about the authentic of the “lost play”. The RSC took both the Don Quixote story along with Double Falsehood and reimagined what Cardenio may have looked like.
I have didn’t expect to see something as amazing as I did that night. The play tells the story of a young man named Cardenio (go figure) who is in love with Lucinda. They want to marry but her father won’t allow it until Cardenio’s father comes to him and offers an official proclamation of marriage between the two. Cardenio is meanwhile called to the service of the Duke whose younger brother, Fernando, is in love with a girl named Doreta, although she has refused his advances many times. Fernando then decides to bribe Doreta’s servant to gain access to her bed chambers where he proclaims his love and betroths himself to her and then consummates the match. Immediately afterward he feels so strange about the ordeal and wonders if he forced her into it, confused and edgy, Fernando flees with Cardenio to Cardenio’s home. Once there, Cardenio decides to tell Fernando all about Lucinda whom upon seeing her, Ferando is entranced by her. He promises to talk to her father on behalf of Cardenio and get the marriage rolling, but instead Fernando asks for her hand for himself. Right afterward Cardenio’s father goes to Lucinda’s father asking for the match, but he’s too late. The marriage happens but Cardenio driven a bit mad flees for the mountains, Lucinda tries to kill herself then flees to a nunnery, and Fernando just runs away. So the Duke and the father’s decide to go looking for them all, and after the intermission they find them! Cardenio is in rags and sounds like a crazy person and he finds Doreta who has disguised herself as a young boy and is now in the company of shepherds (she has been looking for Fernando as well). Cardenio sees right through her disguise and the duke finds her and she tells him all about what Fernando did. The Duke then goes to his brother who has a plan to get Lucinda out of the nunnery, disguise themselves as pallbearers and stick her in an empty coffin and sneak her out. They do this and she is brought somewhere else (“not in the nunnery”). The father’s arrive and eventually everyone is reunited and then of course there is a marriage and then a dance!
Okay yeah it’s little complicated, it’s Jacobean, what to do you expect. The play was so so well done! The script was brilliant and at times sounded exactly like Shakespeare. The performances were top notch (this was the guy playing Cardenio’s debut performance!). There’s not much more I can say without going into detail about the specifics of the performances. It was just so good. Read it, see it, then you’ll know what I mean.
Saturday: Warwick Castle
Happy St. George’s Day!
Built in the 14th century Warwick Castle survived and sort of started the War of the Roses. So lots of history, lots of people, and people dressed up in the full medieval attire. Warwick is pretty epic on its own. When you think of castles in England this is usually what you think of. Saw the demonstration of the Trebuchet (apparently it’s the largest in the world), saw some inspections, creepy wax mannequins and strange and unnecessary audio effects in some of the state rooms. Walked the ramparts and the highest tower and oh what a view! You could see pretty far, the entire city of Warwick at least. Since it was so sunny and warm too it was nice just to sit around and enjoy the weather (apparently we’ve been doing that the most). There was one part, the Gaol, that rightly so was quite possible one of the most sobering and claustrophobic experiences I’ve had. You walk down this tiny staircase into a room that is probably about 12’x12’ with very little light whatsoever and musty smell that if your down there for too long could probably get to you. There was also this one room if you can call it that, maybe hole is better. But for the worst offenders they would stick them in this hole in the ground where you couldn’t stand, move, and probably barely breathe, and then they’d forget about you. It was terrifying too that they still have the writing on the walls from prisoners (one had the year that read “1666-7-8” or something to that effect, three years in there? I could barely last 5 minutes!). Sobering after you go around and enjoy the highest points, soaring eagles and stately rooms of the Victorian era.
Tomorrow: Easter Sunday!
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