I got a text yesterday from Mom saying “Must.have.new.blog.post.” Sorry Mom… I didn’t quite realize how long it has been since I’ve written. It’s been a busy few days but they’ve been filled with adventures.

Last Saturday, I spent most of my day in Hyde Park. I needed to memorize a couple things for the upcoming week at school and simply sitting in my room wasn’t accomplishing much. Instead, I wandered around Hyde Park in some crisp London sunshine, taking photographs and people watching. By the late afternoon, I had found a solitary bench from which I could work on my scripts and still people watch, without being observed talking to myself by too many people.

 

That evening, I met up with Hannah and we went to this amazing Italian restaurant in Piccadilly Circus. It’s called Bocca Di Lupo and has reportedly become the favorite West End actor hang out. We showed up, without a reservation, hoping for the best, and were quickly seated at the counter. It was 7:00 and we were told we had our spots until 8:15. Everyone was pleasant and extremely nice and we didn’t mind the time limit, we just wanted some delicious food. I had a spinach ravioli with spicy sausage (made at the restaurant) and pecorino. Hannah had orecchiette with a different kind of spicy sausage, red onions, and tomatoes. The food was delicious. I could have eaten 15 more plates of pasta simply because it was so good. For dessert we ordered profiteroles filled with gelato. Everything was delicious and it was nice to treat ourselves to a civilized restaurant meal. After we finished dinner, we wandered around Piccadilly Circus for a while, dodging the hordes of tourists along the way. We eventually ducked into a place that advertised live music and sat and listened to a band that was kind of indie-rock style and they weren’t half bad. Tired and full of good food, we finally headed home to sleep.

Sunday the weather was pretty bad, inspiring me to spend most of the day relaxing and continuing to work on my scripts. For one of the brief moments that the weather seemed to clear, I went for a walk around South Kensington for some fresh air and exploring.

Monday was a pretty standard day of school. In rehearsal, I wore my corset for the first time for all 3 1/2 hours of rehearsal. I am truly unsure how women wore them all the time, everyday, all day. Sure, it helps a lot with posture and gives you a ridiculous figure but it is so uncomfortable. After wearing it for about 30 minutes, you kind of forget the discomfort and settle in to having this thing tightened around your body. But, as soon as you loosen the strings to take it off, you’re reminded how liberating it is to not be wearing a corset. I shouldn’t complain though. I love being able to wear one for our work on our Restoration project. Wearing it to work on our scene, I could feel it helping me find my character and embrace the hyper-stylized work of Restoration comedy.

After rehearsal, I hurried to Piccadilly Circus, hoping to get in line for day-of student tickets to The 39 Steps. The theatre it is at sells £15 student tickets at 7 pm, an hour before the show begins. At 6:12 I walked up to the box office window to double check that they even had tickets to sell for the performance that night. The man asked how many I needed and I replied, “Just one!” He looked at his computer screen and said, “Oh alright. Let’s just take care of it now.” So at 6:18 I walked out of the theatre with a 4th row center seat for £15 for that evening’s performance. Theatres here really know how to treat students properly. Thank you, London theatre. I grabbed a quick sandwich and tea at a Cafe Nero across the street and then spent the remainder of my time in Waterstones (British Barnes and Noble) where I tried desperately to resist the urge to purchase anything but, in the end, walked out with Shakespeare by Bill Bryson. Still, I only purchased one book so I think that’s a pretty good testament to my willpower.

The 39 Steps was quite entertaining. It is a show adapted from a 1915 novel by John Buchan and the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film. The cast contains exactly 4 actors – one actor who plays the hero, one actress who plays the three different women he falls in love with over the course of the story, and two actors who play every single other role, sometimes switching hats, voices, and physicality in the middle of a sentence. The show was quite funny and I enjoyed but it is definitely not my favorite thing that I’ve seen. The physical comedy wasn’t quite as clean and crisp as a show like this really demands and, at times, it felt like the actors were kind of just going through the motions. I think the show has been open for a while which might explain this but, still, I had high expectations that weren’t quite met. Don’t get me wrong, though, I was thoroughly entertained and it was nice to spend an evening giggling at silly humor. (I was pleased, though, that I only paid a small price for my ticket while those around me paid probably 4 times as much. Yay student prices!)

The next day was a pretty standard Tuesday and that evening I headed to Amy’s new flat to visit. Yay Amy and John! Your new flat is beautiful and your housemates are really cool. Plus it’s only a 10 minute walk from LAMDA so that’s super convenient. Amy was kind enough to make dinner so we ate our pasta and caught up.

Wednesday morning we met at LAMDA at 9:00 and boarded a bus to Stratford-upon-Avon. I was giddy with excitement and, after about two and a half hours, we arrived in Stratford. After checking into our hotel, we were sent off to explore, find some lunch, and meet for the matinee performance of Wolf Hall at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre. A few of us wandered around the small town (thank goodness it wasn’t raining) and settled on a little dock on the river in the sunshine to wait until it was time for the show.

This was our view from where we sat. You can see Holy Trinity Church in the background, rising out of the trees. We decided to go visit the church, as we had plenty of time before we needed to be at the theatre. Wandering through the RSC Gardens and down a quaint, little road we arrived at the church and were welcomed inside. The inside is beautifully preserved and the windows are full of vibrant colors of paint and stained glass. At the altar of the church is Shakespeare’s grave, surrounded by his wife’s, daughter’s, and son-in-law’s graves. After seeing the grave, we wandered back through the church and marveled at the idea that Shakespeare himself came to worship here. We know so little about this man and yet there we were, standing in a place we know he would have visited during his life.

Finally it was time for the show so we headed to the theatre and settled into our seats. Wolf Hall is the first part of a duo of shows, the second is called Bring Up The Bodies, which we saw that evening. The shows are adapted from the the novels of the same names. They tell the familiar story of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, and England’s break with the Catholic church. While a familiar story to nearly everyone, it is told in a rather unfamiliar way. It is told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is nearly always portrayed as the ultimate villain of this era of history, with stories having been told from Henry’s perspective, Anne’s perspective, and Thomas More’s perspective. Instead, this adaptation made you sympathize with Cromwell. Wolf Hall ends just as Henry realizes his shifting affections towards Jane Seymour. Bring Up The Bodies ends with Henry’s marriage to Jane. These plays are written is fairly vernacular, modern-day English but the productions set them truly in their time period. The costumes were true to period and most of the mannerisms were as well. During the first half of Wolf Hall, the actors seemed to be struggling to inhabit this world that straddled two very distinct time periods. Their words were modern but their costumes were stiffly Tudor. To me, it seemed that it took them a while to figure out how to enter the same world all together. It felt a bit disjointed at times and like each character was existing just fine on his/her own but not in harmony with everyone else on stage. They eventually hit their stride and, once they did, it was riveting. The acting was really solid and I particularly liked the actors who played Thomas Cromwell and King Henry. As the story continued in Bring Up The Bodies, I was further enthralled and swept up into this world of political games and changing hearts. Again, the actors playing Cromwell and Henry shined. Between the two shows, we spent about 6 1/2 hours in the theatre that day. I enjoyed both pieces but didn’t love them. I thought the actors and director were extremely talented but the writing was lacking. I wanted to be swept away with this story and leave the theatre still thinking about it but instead I found myself too often bored with a stoic scene. Again, though, the actors and the way it was staged and directed were what blew my mind. Even after 6 1/2 hours, I could have watched those actors all day long, despite the lackluster script.

When we returned to our hotel, the actor who played King Henry VIII was sitting at the hotel bar. A group of us were down there too and ended up talking to him for about 2 hours. I am still kicking myself that I didn’t go down there too but… oh well. He graduated from LAMDA and was apparently all too happy to talk to everyone. He approached them, recognizing some of them from the audience, and thanking us for being such a great audience. (Apparently the cast had been talking backstage about how wonderful an audience they had all day. You’re welcome, cast, you’re welcome.) He then proceeded to talk to them about his career, the rehearsal processes of these shows, and gave them a ton of advice (which they have all subsequently shared with the rest of us). The next morning, he was downstairs at breakfast at the same time and came over to say hello to our group. It was so impressive and so generous of him to do all this. He was truly one of the stand-out actors in the shows because he played Henry as a human being. I think all too often people playing a king or queen try to play the power of their title. But the reality is that kings and queens simply inhabit that power. They’ve been raised knowing that they have it so they don’t have to put on airs, it is simply who they are. This actor (Nathaniel Parker) embodied the power and did not try too hard to show off that he was king. His authority simply existed, no questions asked. At the same time, though, he brilliantly portrayed the vulnerability of a rather young king with an ever changing heart. When he fell in love with Anne you truly believed he was in love with this woman. And when he fell in love with Jane, you genuinely believed he was in love with her. His vulnerability allowed the audience to feel for Henry and understand his fear and confusion while also recognizing his authority as monarch. Parker’s performance was truly impressive.

Breakfast and dinner were included in our stay at the hotel so Thursday morning we feasted at an American-sized breakfast buffet. Following breakfast, we boarded the bus for a tour of Stratford. Claire was our tour guide and we drove around the city center as she told us various historical fun facts about the town. Then we headed a little bit out of town to Anne Hathaway’s cottage. This is where the Hathaway family lived until 1846. Shakespeare wouldn’t have lived here but we can imagine he came to visit while wooing Anne. (For a more PG-13 version of the story, we might put wooing in quotation marks because, in reality, Anne was 3 months pregnant when they got married. Just saying…) We were taken through the house by a friendly tour guide named David, seen here:

It is a pretty big cottage for a family in those days which means that the Hathaways were pretty well off. As David explained things in each room, he would also point out the origins of various idioms that we still use today. Claire had done the same on the bus on our way to the cottage. Some idiom origins that got explained: good night sleep tight, upper crust, under his thumb, bed and board, cold shoulder, frog in your throat, chairman of the board, and bonfire. I am more than happy to explain each one to you so ask away if you’re curious!

After exploring the cottage, we were left to wander around the gardens and surrounding open space. Thank goodness the weather was cooperating, the sun was shining and there were only a couple puffy white clouds in the sky. Wandering included lots of picture taking and sonnet reciting. Thank god we are all nerds enough to indulge each other.

The next stop on our tour was Shakespeare’s Birthplace. 

After exploring the Birthplace for a while, a few of us went to get some afternoon tea across the street. Full of delicious tea and scones, we then walked around the town for a little while.

At 3, I headed back to the hotel for a workshop that LAMDA had organized. The workshop was led by a woman who co-runs a theatre group just outside of Stratford. She has done work with the RSC and her husband and son are both working actors. We looked at some Richard II  text, exploring some of it for a short time. The workshop was only an hour and fifteen minutes but, having studied Richard and friends in great detail earlier this term, it was fun to return to the script once more. It was like visiting old friends once again.

Soon after the workshop, it was time to feast on an American-sized buffet dinner. We ate so much food and then headed back to the RSC to see Wendy and Peter Pan, a re-telling of the classic Peter Pan story with all the characters we know and love just slightly differently told. This show was spectacular. From the acting to the design to the direction to the tech, this show didn’t miss a thing. There is something about revisiting childhood stories again as an adult, or at least as someone who is all too quickly becoming an adult. I wish that all of you could see this show because it is a show that, I think, would be loved by the whole world. Every person on stage was so fully in the world of the play that the audience was swept up in it too. The children in the audience remained enthralled throughout the performance. There was a little girl in the audience whose giggle carried through the entire theatre. There was a little boy in the second row who had a wooden sword grasped tightly in his hand and when Peter Pan happened to be standing in the aisle next to him, the little boy stared up at Peter like he had seen his hero come to life. Us grown-up kids in the balcony were captivated. By the time the end of the show came, my face was covered in tears and they wouldn’t stop falling. Thank god those around me were experiencing similar waterworks issues. The concept of the show was impressive. Half the time Peter was flying, it wasn’t via a cable. It was a group of six people who were his “shadow” and they would pick him up and spin him around. Even when the Darling children and Peter really did fly, the show was unafraid to show the audience the cables that enabled this because they knew we would all still believe it anyway. It was a truly beautiful show that reminded me the importance of play, dreams, and adventures. It reminded me that theatre has the power to tell incredibly meaningful stories that move people. It reminded me that an excited child lives inside all of us and we can never allow that child to be stifled. It reminded me that the theatre is a place where I get to live out my dreams, have adventures, and, most importantly, a place where I will never have to truly grow up. It reminded me that all it takes is a little fairy dust and a happy thought to make everything ok.

You can see the trailer for the show here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHTplamJPNQ

Friday morning, we had to board the bus to leave Stratford, much to my dismay. Despite not wanting to leave, we all boarded the bus and headed to Warwick Castle. This castle is quite pretty and in the middle of a quaint, countryside town. The castle was bought in 1978 by Madame Tussauds. (Subsequently, the Tussauds group was purchased by Merlin Entertainment so now it’s technically owned by Merlin.) Madame Tussauds has turned it into what feels like a tourist trap in the truest sense of the phrase which is a shame, but it has also allowed a lot of money to be poured into conservation of such a historic place. Something has stood on this site since 914 which makes the castle 1,100 years old. It passed through many, many hands over the ages but what struck me as quite interesting is the fact that the most recent family to own it used it as a house until 1978 when they were forced to sell it because they had run out of money. This was a home to people until so recently… Too often I tuck these castles way back into history, viewing them as mere museum pieces now. This fact reminded me that these functioned as people’s homes where children were born and raised and family’s existed. It was fun to explore the castle and its grounds, despite the rather terrible weather we had that day. We climbed the towers, climbed the hill onto the oldest part of the castle dating from Roman times, and even did a little historical dance in the great hall.

We eventually returned to London and headed to our respective flats. A couple of us met back up later that evening to watch the new Tom Hiddleston movie, Only Lovers Left Alive. It was pretty boring but we enjoyed each other’s company and the acting wasn’t half bad. Exhausted from our trip, we all quickly said goodnight and headed home to sleep.

Yesterday, Jane Thompson (Amy’s mom) was in town. Amy was going to be at work all day so I volunteered to play tour guide. Being from England, Jane has seen pretty much all the touristy things there are to do so we opted for seeing a show instead. Amy said that Jane wanted to see Matilda and I have honestly been waiting for an excuse to wake up early to try and score day-of tickets so this worked out perfectly. I arrived at the theatre at 7am to wait for the box office to open at 10am. I was first in line which meant we were definitely getting tickets and I was very excited. Lindsay came to join me in line and we worked on our lines and I worked on my RP night scene. We were a living cliche of actors waiting in line for cheap theatre tickets while working on their lines. Amy even stopped by to say hello on her way to work. Finally the box office opened and I got our tickets for the matinee. I met Jane at her hotel at noon and we grabbed a quick sandwich and tea before heading towards Leicester Square. We popped in to visit Amy at work and then walked to Trafalgar Square to see the blue rooster statue on the usually empty plinth in the corner of the square. Everywhere we walked, we were battling a ridiculous number of tourists which was a little annoying but such is life I suppose. We headed back towards the theatre and took our seats for the show.

We had incredible seats (thank you, Jane!!) and the show was wonderful. The little kids in the show ranged from ages 9-14. They were so impressive, often dancing the choreography better than the adults. The staging was incredibly creative and possibly one of the coolest parts of the show. The set design was ingenious and the costumes quite funny. Every element of the show came together to create a whimsical world of magic and stories. I am so happy I got to see this show and highly recommend it to anyone in New York or London.

After the show, Jane and I grabbed a cup of tea while waiting for Amy to get off of work. Then, we met up with Amy and walked to Chinatown to get dinner. We went to the Royal Dragon and ate an impressive amount of delicious, authentic Chinese food. Everything was so good and we all enjoyed thoroughly. We parted ways and Jane returned to her hotel and Amy and I went to Amy’s house warming party. This was great because it meant I got to meet all of John’s friends that Amy has been telling me stories about for the past year and a half. They were all as funny and nice as she had made them seem and we had a great time.

I can’t believe another weekend is about to draw to a close. Time is flying and I am trying to make sure I soak in every passing second. Our timetable is on a piece of paper that is double sided, with the first half of the term on the front and the second half on the other side. I remember when they handed them out and it felt like the point when we would have to flip them over was so far away, almost unattainable. And yet, here we are. Monday marks the flip of the timetable, a rather trivial thing in the grand scheme of the world but a physical reminder that our term is half over. So bizarre… Now I’m off to go do some homework and maybe go brave the crowds at the V&A.

Until next time…

Cheers.