“Of all matches never was the like”

Photo album Day 4!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/m19xcQ1W4Aro7VYC7

We started off today by checking out of the Abbey Court Hotel. It wasn’t a bad stay. The rooms were a bit small, and the beds a bit college dorm-y, but overall the staff were nice and the rooms private. We left our bags and hiked around Hyde Park to a nearby station to meet our first tour of the day.

Who can visit London and not tour Shakespeare’s Globe? Not I, nor the rest of us. The Tube dropped us by the River Thames with plenty of time to spare, so we took a slightly scenic route through the grounds of St Paul’s Cathedral. They’re quite nice, and the cathedral is gorgeous – I’d definitely recommend visiting, or at least walking by. It was a fun start to the day, and my second cup of espresso kicked in about then, so I was skipping happily along (and probably concerning a few of my colleagues, to be honest).

Across the river stood our goal: The Globe Theatre. Not the original, as we learned on our tour, but a reconstruction based on thorough research, with a few liberties taken for design. The interior of the tour center had some great pieces – small costume racks, painted ceilings, a plaster reconstruction of a giant oak. We didn’t have much time to look around since we arrived fairly close to start time.

Our tour guide was kind and funny, and authentically seemed to love his job. He introduced us to history about the theatres in the area during the turn of the seventeenth century, the original globe site and its construction materials (and how they’d used the same techniques for this one), that there was a second Globe (and this was #3), and how the American funder (Sam Whittaker? I forget) basically begged the city to allow a thatched roof. Having studied a bit of folklore, I was floored by how real the thatching was, and the growing things on it (moss? green healthy things, anyway).

Post-tour, we took a turn through the gift shop, then broke up to visit the Tate Modern and grab lunch. It wasn’t quite my cuppa, but I enjoyed the various galleries. Many of the areas were pay-to-play, but there were a few available to the general public for free, and Sarah and Eli and I visited those. The art was strange, but also intimate and focused. An artist (see the placards in pictures for names, etc, as I’m almost asleep) had created the International Space Station to scale in miniature out of wire and attached it to a radio that I believe could actually transmit to the ISS. It was cool, and I took a ton of pictures for Travis (since he’s an AV professional), but the light and shadow behind it was my favorite part.

Another gallery was dedicated to a single artist (again, see the name) who used scrolling light bars to broadcast messages across the various rooms. At first it was OK, but after a while the constant color shifts and flashes got to me, so I moved on to other areas. She had used the rooms well – another section held four diagonal scroller bars all broadcasting the same message. The third room held a smaller one that didn’t flash, but the cornerstone (literally) to the room was a standing sleeping bag embroidered with a painful reminder about war. She had quoted a soldier’s lament of holding another as he died. The entrance to the gallery was covered in structured paragraphs, all poignant and very relevant to today’s awful clime. The gallery as a whole was focused, and clearly used the space to play and broadcast her subtle message of war of all kinds as too high a price to pay (among other readings, of course – art’s like that). I’ll have to go over my pictures without the lights to get a better feel. But I liked it, and the gallery stuck with me, so she did her job, and well besides.

After the Tate Modern, the three of us booked it back to Paddington and snagged lunch at a fish ‘n chips shop down the street from the hotel. The fish was ok – haddock? I think – but I wasn’t particularly thrilled with it. Meehans back home was better. Also, chips here really are slightly different than our fries – they’re thick, square-ish cut, rather than slim or chunky, and slightly soggy. Perhaps it’s a different type of fry oil? They weren’t bad, and I definitely (spoiler) ate most of mine at supper.

We were all to meet back up at the hotel to grab our bags and migrate to Marylebone station for the train to Stratford. Unfortunately, some of us missed the Tube and had to come later, but they did have service enough to get our message that we’d already left and were waiting at Marylebone for them. Things got sorted fairly quickly from there, and we caught the train with plenty of time to spare.

The train to Stratford was long-ish, compared to our Tube hops of the past few days. It didn’t feel too bad, and it was nice to sit for two hours (we did change trains once, but it was quick). I took a bunch of pictures of the countryside. I’m auditing an Old English course back at GSU which focuses on landscape, so I was especially interested in watching it go by. The fields were neat, with slim farm rows (if it wasn’t a grazing field), though much smaller in acreage than my uncle’s farmlands – not more than an acre for any one field, though I’m sure the owners had more than one apiece, as I saw fewer houses than field sections.

Each section was “cordoned” off by hedgegrows, though. The land was intensely green on the ground, but the hedges were only just coming out of Winter and into Spring, so there wasn’t much green in the air. Too, some of them were in ditches and some on the ground. There were trees, but again, unfamiliar shapes, and I now have a frame of reference for “copse” of trees – small, maybe fifty to a hundred yards across, and full of mostly skinny trees. There weren’t nearly as many oaks or wide-barreled trees as I’d imagined. I suppose a land consistently inhabited for nearly two thousand years has some things to say, and reforestation is harder than it looks.

After we de-trained in Stratford, we ended up hiking to the hotel, a bit over a mile away. We had considered bus or taxi, but being a party of twelve, it would’ve been difficult and expensive for one, and just as far from the drop off point for the other, so we decided to hoof it. We had the time, and enough afterward to relax a bit, unpack, and have supper before the show. So we did. Shabana, Rachel, Ahnjeli, and I found the local fish ‘n chips shop, and cannot recommend it enough. The fish – we think cod, this time – was much fresher and flakier than my earlier lunch, and actually had flavor. The breading reminded us of McNuggets, though a bit on the denser side, and, again, more flavorful. The tartar sauce was very, very limey, so I stuck with mayo and ketchup (much less sweet!) and ate a slab of fish at least 9″ long, and half the chips.

We entered the Royal Shakespeare Company’s building through the gift shop (I picked up a game about death, a couple of cards to send home, and a present for Mom) and then met up with the rest of the group for tickets. We randomly picked our seats – seems they only had sections of two or three – and I ended up in a side of house row with Ahnjeli and Anastasia surrounding a support pole.

I chatted up the young woman seating folks, and managed to find out where Front of House was, as well as band stage. The theatre had a center stage with three spokes for actor use, as well as two balconies. The lower was used for both entrance/exit and chorus, the upper for band – and what a band it was!! What floored me, though, was FOH location. The seating sections were also in three layers, spread around the stage and spokes, and I couldn’t spot FOH anywhere.

No, these ingenious designers had kept the integrity of the acoustics by adding catwalks above the third level instead of rigging, which helped insanely with sound quality. Above and around these catwalks lay sound and light boards, sound directly facing stage with a perfect view, and light to house left, in view of the central movers and stage both. They actually cared about their AV folks. Enough to put them in the best possible place. Floored, I tell you.

And I don’t think I managed to pick my jaw up from that floor the entire show.

Enter a few perfectly dressed actors dancing a perfectly choreographed traditional Elizabethan dance, singing perfect Italian songs. Oh. Did I mention how inclusive the casting was within the first five seconds of the show? Not only were there people of color – men and women both – but there was a woman in a wheelchair. Dancing. In a dress made for her, that lay perfectly arranged with respect to her chair.

Exit to the wings, and enter Lucentio and Tranio.

I’m sorry.

Lucentia. And Trania.

The writers had completely flipped the script. Every person in the show was the opposite gender, excepting Grumio. Petruchia tamed Katherine (a gentleman) while Lucentia courted Bianco. And it wasn’t kitschy or weird or uncomfortable, or even remarkable except that it was so well done. Indeed, even Kate’s final speech remained mostly unchanged, swapping gender words and phrases, but keeping the reference to Kate and the now-husbands as the gentler of the two, claiming the women were the breadwinners and the men owing only love.

The costumes, too, struck me down flat. The fabrics matched, suitor to love, with major pieces in brocade and minor in lighter fabrics of coordinating color. Biandella’s dress, again, was tailored to fit her chair while still giving the impression of a slight train, and, with the low back, we could clearly see the authentically-designed seam lines following her corset construction in the back. Bags, shoes, accessories, all to period. Gremia, one of Bianco’s suitors, wore almost a mourning gown, extremely well-tailored in black velvet, with a flocked brocade underskirt with a hint of purple, bringing out the silver in her hair. She was clearly an old hand at Elizabethan plays, as her hooped skirt did not move when she walked.

Each suitor’s sleeves, too, were styled differently, some with the rolled shoulder, some poof-sleeves, and some straight. I do wish I was allowed to take pictures, as I’m sure they were significant. I’d like to email the playhouse as a student and see if they’d let me study the pieces. I would not mind paying to see that again. Not at all, especially since I legitimately cried ugly, happy tears the first five minutes of the show.

And then I cried more ugly, happy tears when Curtis, meeting Grumio at the house after the wedding, signed British Sign Language for her entire part (which I could somewhat understand since it’s almost mutually intelligible with ASL, but not enough). And Grumio spoke/signed back. And then he continued to sign his part whenever she was in the scene so she could keep up. While the original Curtis is an important character in that he listens to the story and helps Grumio tell the audience how they’ve arrived from Padua, disheveled and unhappy, the audience understood enough about the conversation from Grumio’s words and Curtis’ broad gestures and facial expressions to carry on without it being an impediment – and honestly, it added so much to the already vibrant show. I’d love to see more deaf actors on stage.

Oh. And the swans of Stratford make me smile. Plus, I suppose they’re somewhat a subject of my thesis, so they’re everywhere in today’s album.

Tomorrow, we head to Shakespeare’s home and birthplace, wander Stratford for a bit, then head back to London for Waitress at the Adelphi.