Day 144-148: Theatre in London

London. I can never get enough of that city. The energy, the vibrancy, the diversity, the Britishness... Just stepping off the plane put a smile on my face.

The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square

This time, I went to London to spend the weekend with Hannah and her friend Molly. We stayed at Molly's great aunt's, and I'd say it was the nicest place I stayed at on my whole trip. We had a guest flat in a large, modern glass building, in Chelsea (the posh part of London) right overlooking the Thames. It was a tad inconvenient to get to the tube (the nearest station was half an hour walk away) but a helpful bus ran right by the flat and into central London. 

At the Canadian Embassy- One foot in Canada, the other in Britain! :)

The point of being in London, as I wrote about here, was to get tickets to Coriolanus and Richard II, starring Tom Hiddleston and David Tennant, respectively. As I mentioned, we were only half successful, but I enjoyed the theatre experience nonetheless.

The stage at the start of Richard II

Firstly, Richard II was fantastic. Tragic, funny (the scene where they keep throwing down the gauntlet was flippin' hilarious), well-acted and directed, with beautiful musical additions... It was everything I had hoped it would be. Even without David Tennant, I would have loved the show. With him, it was basically the best first live Shakespeare experience I could have hoped for (odd, isn't it, that I hadn't see Shakespeare live before? What kind of English Major am I?)

The stage at the end of Richard II

Since Hannah and Molly were disappointed about not seeing Coriolanus, they had scoured the West End to find another show for us to watch that evening. Eventually they bought tickets for Agatha Christie's 'The Mousetrap,' which is the world's longest running play, going for 62 years and 25,498 performances. I really enjoyed the show, it was dramatic and funny and clever, and watching it definitely took the sting off of not seeing Coriolanus. We were just a tad depressed when we walked out and noticed that the Donmar Warehouse was right across the road. So near, yet so far...

St. Martin's theatre, playing the Mousetrap

Sunday was supposed to be an exciting day: morning church service at Hillsong, afternoon tea at Molly's aunt's, and evening service at Westminster Abbey. Unfortunately, I managed to get dreadfully ill with a fever/flu/cold, so I spent the entire day lying in bed, too knackered to even watch TV. By the evening I was feeling a bit better (probably because Hannah made me take a pill, helped down by a spoonful of Nutella) so I called my family and talked to them for about three hours before my iPad decided to quit. 

These lovely ladies dressed up for The Mousetrap;
I was still in a hoody and messy makeup after queuing at 6:50 for Richard II! 

On Monday, I took the four o'clock train back up to St. Andrews. It's really convenient how they have a train service directly from London up to Aberdeen, running past St. Andrews, so it only took me 5.5 hours to get back.

The Albert Bridge in Chelsea, where I went for a walk Monday morning

And that concludes my adventures. Forty days, eleven cities, countless friends and relatives and acquaintances... It was quite a time. I'm never going to forget this Europe trip.

Day 146: Back in the UK... and Queuing

(The proper British experience- a queue)

I'm currently sitting in the Barbican theatre in a queue of far too many people, waiting for tickets to David Tennant's Richard II. My friends Hannah and Molly are probably at the Domar Warehouse (a smaller theatre in the West End) queuing for tickets for Tom Hiddleston's Coriolanus. If all goes well, I should get to see both today, one matinee and one evening. At very least I'll get to see Richard II, since I'm currently person forty in the queue, and they have sixty day seats.

All this theatre madness means, of course, that I'm back in the UK. London, specifically. It's fantastic to be back here, to have all the signs in English, to hear the British accents, and to be in a semi-familiar city. I may not have spent much time in London, but I definitely know it better than Budapest!

The strangest thing, actually, has been the language. It's been almost as jolting as when I got home from my Quebec trip- I was so used to hearing another language all around me, to not being able to read signs, and to speaking slowly when asking for directions from a local. Getting back to all-English was an unexpected shock. 

It's also funny how London feels so homey. As soon as I got off the plane, almost literally as my toe hit the tarmack, I felt like I was back where I belonged. The little happy voice started chattering in my head, and I immediately began talking in a British accent. I picked up a bit of an accent over Christmas, lost it while travelling, but as soon as I got back to England, even before talking to a single British person, my accent was back. 

I'm in London until Monday afternoon, hanging out with Hannah and Molly at this really posh flat in Chelsea, a nice area in west London. It's been great to see my friends again and I love getting to visit London with some other people. Hannah is also into rather different things than I am, so we're going to a lot of different places than where I went last time. If this was my first time in London I'd be disappointed that we weren't going to the famous sights, like Big Ben and the London Eye, but since I've been here before it's nice to see new stuff. 

This queue is ridiculous. It's now 9:30, which means I've been here for over two and a half hours. There are likely about twice as many people behind me as ahead, meaning that there are about 120 people waiting for day seats... about twice as many as there are seats. I have no idea why people near the end are still here. I suppose it is the last day the play is showing, so they're probably just holding on to the vain hope that someone will return a ticket. Still, it's another hour until the box office opens, meaning they'll probably be waiting for nearly two hours still only to be disappointed.

(Later note: I got tickets to Richard II! Unfortunately, we didn't get Coriolanus tickets, but I probably would have picked David Tennant over Tom Hiddleston, if push really came to shove. As I post this, it's the interval between the two acts of Richard II, so I have seen David Tennant! So much excitement!)

Classic of the Week: Hamlet

Today’s Classic of the Week is probably my favourite Shakespeare play, and certainly one of the most famous. One of the reasons I love it so much is that David Tennant (the best Doctor ever) performed as the lead character a couple years ago and did an amazing job. Also, I just love the style of play. It’s a revenge tragedy, but instead of having a blind desire for revenge, the hero is a university student who would much rather be studying than trying to kill his uncle. The play is….

Hamlet holding the skull of Yorick, the jester

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Almost everyone will know the basic plot of Hamlet. Two months before the play starts, Hamlet’s Uncle Claudius kills his father and marries his mother, becoming king of Denmark. Hamlet isn’t very happy about this, but when his father’s ghost appears to him and tells him it was murder, he decides to get revenge. The problem is, he’s not sure if the ghost is telling the truth. So he gets some actors to put on a play of the murder to see if Claudius will look guilty. Claudius ends up leaving halfway because he can’t stand to hear it, so Hamlet is sure that Claudius is a murderer. Then, due to some complications that I couldn’t mention earlier, Hamlet ends up getting in a fencing match with another young man at court, and, thanks to a lot of poison, everyone ends up dying.

Hamlet creeps up behind Claudius while he's praying

Hamlet could have been a normal revenge tragedy. Uncle murders father, Hamlet murders uncle, everything works out fine. In fact, this is how it all works out in The Lion King, which is basically just Hamlet re-done with lions. But what Shakespeare does that is so brilliant is create a hero that is very poorly suited to a revenge tragedy. Hamlet is a quiet young man, a university student. At the beginning of the play, his one request is to go back to Wittenberg, a center of learning. Hamlet is saddened by his father’s death but he has no interest in getting revenge, until his father’s ghost appears.

Then it takes a good long while before Hamlet actually decides to kill Claudius. Hamlet has several opportunities to get revenge but he decides to wait for two main reasons. First of all, he’s not sure that Claudius did in fact kill his father and he wants to be sure before he kills someone. Secondly, he chooses not to kill his uncle while he’s praying because he wants the uncle to go to hell, not heaven. This may sound really cruel, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. After all, Hamlet thinks that his father was murdered without time for prayer, sending him to purgatory. If Hamlet kills his uncle only to send him to Heaven, then that’s not revenge at all.

Hamlet and Ophelia

All in all, I would highly recommend Hamlet to anyone. It’s not actually as hard to understand as some of Shakespeare’s other plays, especially if you watch a film along with it. Kenneth Branagh has a wonderful uncut version of the play, making it easy to read along, but I personally prefer the David Tennant version which is absolutely hilarious. Before I watched this I never thought Shakespeare could be that funny, but it certainly is. Shakespeare somehow manages to combine tragedy and hilarious comedy to create Hamlet.