Remember how I like to see live theater?

So I've actually done a lot between last England post and Spain and Spain and Wales but blogging is so time consuming and I give up easily. I have dedicated this post to all the shows I have seen during the two specified time period previously stated. So I think that the last show I discussed with you was The Woman in Black, really it was that long ago? That's sad. Let me look real quick. Whoa it is. That is sad. Live theater is seriously my favorite thing to do. Previous to this it was watching movies and it will be back to seeing movies once I leave London, cause unless you're in New York, theater is hardly ever worth it. Ok I'm going to give you the rundown of what shows I have seen. 

Les Miserables

[ Mary, Cameron, Me and Brit at Les Mis ]

So I've never read Les Mis ( that book is like 1500 pages, geez Leo) and I did see the Heidelberg Community Theater perform a shortened version when I was twelve there for I was asleep the whole time. Because of this Les Mis was awesome. I think coming into it mostly blind really added to whole experience. First of all we got sweet seats. I love my international student card. Only students in London can get standby about an hour before the show. Four of us, out of the eight or so who came, got tickets in row G in the stalls, that's on the ground floor for those of you who are theater illiterate, for 27 pounds (roughly fifty bucks). Those tickets actually cost over a hundred pounds. They were really really good seats. 

Second, the set was pretty spectacular. The entire middle was a giant lazy susan making scene changes seamless. You just gotta see it. 

Third, the actors were awesome. Not only did they have great voices but they can actually act. And it is a feat to pull that off in live theater. Les Mis is a pretty depressing play, you know people dying, war and revolution, you know, it was quite moving. So much so that big ole Calvin shed a tear. 

[ These guys, awesome ]

39 Steps

[ This is from their website, it shows some of the actors ]

The 39 steps is a spoof of Hitchcock movies. Now I haven't seen very many of those but the play is still hilarious without it. The show only has four actors, three guys and one girl. All but the main guy (dude with the pipe up there) play tons of roles, like in Monty Python. There was a lot of slapstick humor and things of the like. We got kinda crappy seats, on the extreme right of the stage in the second row. The actors were great, I wouldn't have been able to keep a straight face. The story is about this man who meets a mysterious woman who turns out to be a secret agent with a big top secret, she ends up getting killed and the main guy has to go stop the bad guy, getting framed for the woman's murder in the process. The set was very simplistic, just different furniture brought in for each new scene by the actors. All in all the play was hilarious, I give it two thumbs up. 

Oliver!

[ Best character, kid in front, the Artful Dodger ]

Ok we went to go see this show as a group because the brit lit class read Oliver. With so many people, we got horrible seats; we were in the very very back of the stalls where the balcony overhead blocked the view of the stage. Now I was comparing this performance to the movie I used to watch and it was not so good. The best character was Dodger, he got really into and had a great cockney accent. But Oliver's voice was lacking and even though the character of Nancy is a prostitute that doesn't mean that others of the same profession need to be motioning and displaying their "trade" on stage while Nancy sings Oom Pah Pah with a big smile on her face. It was too much. All in all, I'm glad it was free. 

The World's Wife

[ the book cover ]

Carol Ann Duffy is a pretty famous poet here in the UK, she's the equivalent of the US poet laureate. Calvin, the poetry grad student, had to read this collection of poems for class and as I try to feel intelligent and cultured I too read the collection. I really liked the premise of the collection. Each poem is writing from the point of view of world famous people, for example, Pygmalion, Shakespeare and Faust. Some of the poems are really witty and funny while some are deep and thought provoking. 

Calvin found out that there was a one woman show that was closing soon that dramatized this collection. So Calvin, Cameron, Laura, Susan Howe and I all got tickets and went to see it. The show, as I said was a one woman act and it was in a tiny U shaped theater that seated 100. 

[ Linda Marlowe, said one woman ]

The show was very simple, minor costume changes and props were used at the change of each poem. In the picture is Mrs. King Kong. This poem was a little different from the rest because the author switched it so that the character of King Kong was a woman, and that's her tiny little man husband in her hands. One of my favorites was Mrs. Freud. Linda put on a fur stole and cat eye glasses and spoke in a great German accent and you can imagine what she spoke about....

Another good one was this:

Mrs. Darwin

Went to the Zoo.
I said to Him—
Something about that Chimpanzee over there reminds me of you.

That one was the shortest, nice and simple. 

Phantom of the Opera

[ Alyssa, Rachel, Reesa, Me, Brit and Calvin and creepy mustache ]

Now I saw this very show at this very theater when I was twelve. Frankly, all I really remember was the Phantom's Lair set, the ice cream I got at intermission and that it was good. So coming back was definitely a must. They don't have student tickets so we actually had to pre plan going to see this show. We got great seats:

[ Her Majesty's Theater ]

Ok I didn't take this picture but our seats were on the very front row of this balcony, right in the middle. It was perfect because the chandelier fell right in front of our faces and the all the effects are so much cooler from above. Of course I can only sing praises about this production and I'm sure you don't really want to hear it. One critique is the awful coordination of the ballerinas. I mean come on, its not that hard to keep time and its not like the choreography is too hard to stay in sync. I must say though, the best part is the live orchestra, it totally makes the show. And sitting up above I got to see down into the pit, it was really great. 

[ I don't think this was the Christine when I went but I'm pretty sure that's the same Phantom, hard to tell though....]

PS There is a sequel to Phantom that just started, Love Never Dies, I refuse to see it. It's set in Coney Island. 

Twelfth Night

We went to go see Twelfth Night as a group because the Shakespeare class read it. I like the story of Twelfth Night, thus my love for She's the Man. The production seemed a little lacking, some of the characters were old and dry and I didn't like them very much. The best scene is the one shown on the poster, Malvolio and the box tree. It was hilarious. Another downside was that we again had horrible seats, way up high and way on the side, I could only see the top left corner of the stage. So I listened as best I could with out being distracted by....sleep. 

War Horse

Ok a picture for this one won't load but here's the gist of the play: There are these really cool puppets, they kinda look like a wooden frame of a horse, life size, and underneath them are two dudes who make them move and walk and stuff. That was pretty cool to watch, the puppeteers did a great job. The plot line on the other hand was pretty dismal. Its about a boy who gets a horse, Joey, and he has a weird love relationship with the horse. The horse gets sold to the Army for WWII. Some German guys find him. Farm boy joins the Army to go find the horse. And they do and live happily ever after. It was weird. If you want a pretty honest review, check out Calvin's, mind you he hated it. 

Macbeth

[ poster for Macbeth ]

So the Globe Theater puts on a free show for students before the actual theater season starts (its an open air theater so shows usually start the end of april). This year was Macbeth and through a couple lucky circumstances I was able to get a ticket. So on a Saturday afternoon we made our way down to the Globe and we were the first ones in the theater for the first show of the 2010 Globe theater season. That was a great feeling. Our tickets were for the yard. Which means we got to stand in the yard between the stage and the seats, kinda like a mosh pit at a concert. This is called being a grounding. It's really the best place to be minus the fact that you have to stand the whole time. So being the first people in the theater we got the best place. 

[ sarah, laura, mary, kalyn, brit, me and calvin ]

As you can see we were right up on the stage as close to the middle as you can get. It was fantastic. The actors were right there, I could have tripped them if I wanted too. They looked at us when they spoke, they accidentally spit on us, dripped fake blood on us, etc. It was great. 

Now if you don't know the plot of Macbeth I'll give you a quick rundown: There is a big battle going on in Scotland, Macbeth ends up getting promoted because of deaths of other people. When coming back from battle he and his buddy Banquo get visited by three witches who tell Macbeth that he is going to be the next king and tell Banquo that the royal line will be from his posterity. They get a little freaked out. macbeth tells his wife about it and she says let's kill the king and blame it on the guards and since you got promoted you'll be king. So they did. And then Macbeth is King and he gets all worried that Banquo's kids are gonna take his place so he kills Banquo. So on and so forth, lots of people die, there's lots of blood and spooky hauntings. In the end everyone dies but Macduff, another high up dude, and he becomes king. That doesn't really do it justice, at all. 

This production was set in Scotland, but in modern times, so all the soldiers were wearing camo. What was great about the Globe is that the actors interact with you. They perform all over. A character will pop up in the stands somewhere, or a procession will go through the yard. This play had army men repelling from all sides of the stage. 

[ Thats Banquo, he's awesome ]

The actors talk to you and interact with you, they would make little adlibs to make fun of the audience or something. It was really cool. 

[ I found this online and since there was only one show i'm one of the little pale faces on the other side of the middle plank] 

The actors did a really good job of being compelling. They were all really passionate about their characters and you could tell by how they acted. There was live music and really cool stunts and "special affects." It all kinda sucked you in to the story. My favorite was the guy who played Macbeth:

[ this is from a rehearsal ]

He was astounding. He did a phenomenal job. He had great facial expressions and a real intensity in all his lines. I had a little crush on him, too bad he dies. 

All in all this was the epitome of my London experience. It'll probably be the best play I'll ever see.

An Inspector Calls

It's really hard to write a review for this after talking about Macbeth. I even saw this the same day that I saw Macbeth. This is a play about a family that gets ripped apart when an Inspector comes knocking on their door. He tells them of a girl who killed herself in the infimory that night and the family discovers how they are all connected to her and how they all lead her to her suicide. The entire play is one scene. It took a little to get use to because all you do is watch them talk in the same room. But the plot was pretty interesting. Then there's a twist at the end when you find out the inspector doesn't really work for the police and I got really confused. But regardless of my confusion, the actors did, of course, a great job. The mother in the family was pretty back bitting and witty and that was funny. 

[ the set ]

The play centered around this little house. Its like a doll house, the door is not full size but still big enough for an adult to crouch down under. The front half of the house opens up like a doll house. It was pretty cool. At the climax of the play the house rises up and tilts forward causing all the dishes and chairs and things to come crashing out onto the stage. That really put the point across that this family's world was shattering, quite literally. I enjoyed the show, but it was no Macbeth.

The Royal Ballet's Romeo and Juliet

[ not the same dancers, but same choreography ]

On a whim I skipped class and went to the Royal Opera House box office and got the only tickets available for that night's production of Romeo and Juliet. One of the other girls here, Laura, has done ballet her whole life too and we were really excited to see the Royal Ballet do pretty much anything, but Romeo and Juliet was just a happy surprise. 

So on a Tuesday night, we got all dolled up:

[ brit, me and laura ]

Our tickets were standing tickets back we still got a pretty decent view. I did however had my shoes off the whole time. The production was spotless. All the dancers were pretty much amazing, as they should be to get into the Royal Ballet, but Juliet is my idol. Later we found out that the Juliet we saw was the alternate, but we are so glad it was here. Juliet was flawless, she melted across the stage. Every move was so effortless. Her par de deux with Paris and then again with Romeo were the best dancing I have ever seen. I can  not say enough how elegantly she flowed.

Being a dancer and knowing how much effort and strength is actually involved in those movements makes all the more impressive. She is my idol.