"All the world's a stage. . . "

LONDON
The West End, Shakespeare, Fringe Theatre, dramas, musicals, comedy revues. . .what do these have in common?  London, of course! 

Theater is perhaps THE reason we are all in London this fall.  It’s the focus of the AIFS Study Abroad program here and several of the courses we offer are about drama.  One of my colleagues, Wendy Wisely, is a theatre professor, so she’s taking her students to all kinds of dramatic events from medieval mystery plays to contemporary fringe theatre productions.  For my Shakespeare class, we’ve already seen two performances of the plays we’ve studied: Much Ado about Nothing and The Tempest.

Our family is indulging in as much of the theatre the students attend as we can, plus some other shows we want to see.

Two weeks ago we accompanied my students to see Much Ado at the outdoor venue at the reconstructed Globe Theatre on the south bank.  We crammed into the surprisingly small area below the main stage to take our places as “groundlings” or the part of the audience paying cheap prices for standing room.  Aside from aching feet, it was I think the best vantage point for the play.  The actors really played to us. Beatrice even reached out and clasped hands with one young woman in the audience during a scene and Benedick was constantly hamming it up to our responses.  Seeing the play on an authentic Elizabethan stage with period costumes was a thrill.  (I know we can do this in Ashland, too, but here we were actually almost on the identical SPOT where Shakespeare wrote and performed 400 years ago. . . ) 

Last week we went to see The Tempest at another venue, the Royal Haymarket Theatre in the West End.  This time we had seats very high instead of very low, and in fact we saw more of the top of Prospero’s head than his magical staff.  He was played by the famous actor Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort in Harry Potter 7) who gave a powerful performance.  Afterwards, my students were rather critical of the overall production, however, claiming that Ariel couldn’t sing and that the costumes and flying scenes were inconsistent.  The students will be performing their own scenes from The Tempest in class this week, so we’ll see how that goes. . . .

Also last week the four of us accompanied Wendy to a family-oriented production of the E. Nesbitt classic,  The Railway Children. Believe it or not, the venue was the former Eurostar terminal at Waterloo Station.  Our seats were poised just in front of the railroad track.  During the performance an authentic 1870 steam engine (reconstructed as a diesel) came roaring along the track.  Another thrill!

Next on our schedule in the coming two weeks are Wicked and War Horse. Stay tuned! 

Beth