England 2008: Part the Second
Oct. 21st, 2008 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nonelvisPartial transcript of a conversation on October 18:
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nonelvis: I'm really glad you came with me on this trip.
soccerjude: Well, I wasn't going to let you stare at Tennant's ass all by yourself.
We arrived in Stratford around 7pm and found Sheep Street virtually empty, not much of a surprise given that there was a performance of Love's Labour's Lost that night. After a lovely Indian meal (cheese and garlic naan: an idea whose time has come), we wandered over to the Courtyard Theatre to make sure we knew where it was and pick up a few things from the gift shop.
While we were there, we could hear the audience laughing out loud repeatedly. There was a high-def monitor near one of the Stalls doors, and I could see the actors, including David Tennant, onstage.soccerjude practically had to drag me out of the theatre lobby.
We spent the next morning walking along the Avon and visiting Shakespeare's grave at Holy Trinity Church. Visiting churches frankly makes me uncomfortable – I always feel as if people will somehow know not just that I'm a Jew, but that I don't believe in God, and the nonexistent deity will strike me down with a lightning bolt. But I wasn't going to miss out on seeing Shakespeare's grave, and truly, Holy Trinity is a gorgeous church:
It was also a stunning day outside, good for taking photos of the Avon:
and also good for taking photos of the most inadvertantly fetishistic window display I've ever seen:
(Furry is not my fetish, but I do have to wonder if the window dresser was aware of it as a fetish at all, because HOLY CRAP.)
Finally, we grabbed pasties (Cornish forsoccerjude, who'd never had one, and cheese and onion for me) and pastry (chocolate shortbread and the best cream and jam bun I've ever had) for a quick lunch and headed to the theatre to see Love's Labour's Lost.
The set was gorgeous: a gigantic tree with branches stretching up nearly to the second floor (where we were seated) with long strands of shiny plastic shards to simulate leaves. There were also Oriental rugs, plush pillows, and baskets of food, as if setting up for a picnic.
Nearly ten minutes before the play was scheduled to start, an actor (I forget whether it was Longaville or Dumaine) wandered onstage, sat on a cushion, and started eating grapes. Soon afterwards, a second actor joined him. A few minutes later, Tennant wandered on, fanning himself with a hat and yawning, and lay down, covering his face with the hat. At first, starting the play like this seemed a little strange to me, but as it progressed, I realized the approach fit well with the light and casual feel the director was going for. (Similarly, before starting the second half of the play, several members of the company walked onstage before the house lights came down and performed a traditional dance with clogs and sticks.)
Highlights:
1) Early on, Tennant tossed his hat halfway across the stage, where it landed neatly on a branch. The audience burst into applause, and for just a moment, Tennant broke character to say "Every time." Both he and the cast started laughing and needed a few seconds to pull themselves together before continuing.
2) The costumes. Oh my goodness, these were gorgeous costumes. Virtually everyone was dressed in shades of white and cream, with Berowne and Rosaline, as well as Armando and Moth, as the primary exceptions.
Credit: Geraint Lewis/The Independent
3) David Tennant and Nina Sosanya (Rosaline) have performed together many times, and their comfort level with each other really shows. They can flirt with the best of 'em.
4) The play was bawdy and even a little rowdy in the best Shakespearean tradition. The actress playing Jacquenetta did things with the handle of a butter churn that made me wonder if the parents in the audience were covering their children's eyes, and during Berowne's speech at the end of Act III, Scene i, Tennant interacted with the audience, pointing out a lady with crossed arms ("Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms") and smirking at a man he'd randomly picked to illustrate "Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces."
5) Moment of Distraction #1: Did I mention the Scottish accent? And the stubble?
6) Moment of Distraction #2: When meeting Rosaline, Berowne unties his shirt and starts rubbing his chest. Right in front of us.
7) Moment of Distraction #3: Our seats were just a little above eye level with the tree:
Credit: Jamie Wallace/Rex
8) Moment of Distraction #4: During Berowne's long speech about love at the end of Act III, Scene iii, Tennant whipped off his jacket and opened up most of his shirt. The interior dialogue in my brain went something like this:
Rational Brain: Ooh, look, he's doing that incredibly long speech! The beautiful speech about why it's okay for the court to drop their vow of chastity and fall in love with the women! The one you were wondering how anyone could possibly memorize!
Fangirl Brain: GUH.
Um. Anyway. Hamlet.
After a short break at the B&B, followed by a nice dinner at a Café Rouge, we headed back to the theatre for the next play. Unlike LLL, the set for Hamlet is nothing more than a gigantic mirrored wall at the back of the stage, with occasional additions: a throne, a bed and dresser, an open grave. The first scene, played almost entirely in pitch black with the actors using flashlights, was properly creepy, as was Patrick Stewart as the Ghost.
It's almost impossible for me to say something about this production that hasn't been said before, so I'll stick to praising the actors, who were incredibly good, especially Stewart, Oliver Ford Davies (Polonius), and of course, David Tennant. Although I felt Tennant didn't truly hit his stride until the "get thee to a nunnery" scene with Ophelia, once he was on, he swung effortlessly between sanity and madness. Patrick Stewart, meanwhile, was Claudius, playing the king as a charming, seductive, and very dangerous snake. And Davies was possibly the best Polonius I've seen, steering away from the silly, doddering old man portrayal Polonius often gets and bringing in enough seriousness that you could believe Polonius was once the sharpest advisor in the court who has simply begun a slow decline into senility.
(Wait, maybe I do have one question I haven't seen addressed elsewhere: if you have a two-story tall reflective surface that gets partially shattered during the course of the play (when Hamlet shoots Polonius), how in the hell do you replace it every night? It would be far too expensive, difficult, and time-consuming to use actual glass mirrors, but the surface legitimately looked shattered (as opposed to the optical illusion of shattered glass), so I'm dying to know how the RSC managed this little trick.)
And finally, from the purely shallow perspective (because I know I'm not the only one here looking at this from the shallow end), there were a couple of Moments of Distraction that stood out: the first, the scene with the Mousetrap, with Tennant in a tuxedo (always a major, major plus); and the second, all the scenes in which he was barefoot, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and had his hair sticking in all directions. See, the t-shirt was perhaps a little ... short. Short enough that whenever he raised his arms enough you could see a couple of inches of belly and that part where it starts to curve down towards his groin and I think my brain completely short-circuited during some of those moments. (Look, I said this was the shallow portion, okay?)
In conclusion, Hamlet good, Tennant hot, and oh my God, was this trip ever worth a year's worth of planning. I'm ready to go back now, and not just because I don't think I've fully readjusted to my time zone. Hopefully I can convincecolumbina to go to England next year, and maybe even sneak across the Channel to Paris for a day or two.
Thus endeth the report. More photos in the England 2008 photoset on Flickr, if you haven't already gone to look.
nonelvis: I'm really glad you came with me on this trip.soccerjude: Well, I wasn't going to let you stare at Tennant's ass all by yourself.We arrived in Stratford around 7pm and found Sheep Street virtually empty, not much of a surprise given that there was a performance of Love's Labour's Lost that night. After a lovely Indian meal (cheese and garlic naan: an idea whose time has come), we wandered over to the Courtyard Theatre to make sure we knew where it was and pick up a few things from the gift shop.
While we were there, we could hear the audience laughing out loud repeatedly. There was a high-def monitor near one of the Stalls doors, and I could see the actors, including David Tennant, onstage.
soccerjude practically had to drag me out of the theatre lobby.We spent the next morning walking along the Avon and visiting Shakespeare's grave at Holy Trinity Church. Visiting churches frankly makes me uncomfortable – I always feel as if people will somehow know not just that I'm a Jew, but that I don't believe in God, and the nonexistent deity will strike me down with a lightning bolt. But I wasn't going to miss out on seeing Shakespeare's grave, and truly, Holy Trinity is a gorgeous church:
It was also a stunning day outside, good for taking photos of the Avon:
and also good for taking photos of the most inadvertantly fetishistic window display I've ever seen:
(Furry is not my fetish, but I do have to wonder if the window dresser was aware of it as a fetish at all, because HOLY CRAP.)
Finally, we grabbed pasties (Cornish for
soccerjude, who'd never had one, and cheese and onion for me) and pastry (chocolate shortbread and the best cream and jam bun I've ever had) for a quick lunch and headed to the theatre to see Love's Labour's Lost.The set was gorgeous: a gigantic tree with branches stretching up nearly to the second floor (where we were seated) with long strands of shiny plastic shards to simulate leaves. There were also Oriental rugs, plush pillows, and baskets of food, as if setting up for a picnic.
Nearly ten minutes before the play was scheduled to start, an actor (I forget whether it was Longaville or Dumaine) wandered onstage, sat on a cushion, and started eating grapes. Soon afterwards, a second actor joined him. A few minutes later, Tennant wandered on, fanning himself with a hat and yawning, and lay down, covering his face with the hat. At first, starting the play like this seemed a little strange to me, but as it progressed, I realized the approach fit well with the light and casual feel the director was going for. (Similarly, before starting the second half of the play, several members of the company walked onstage before the house lights came down and performed a traditional dance with clogs and sticks.)
Highlights:
1) Early on, Tennant tossed his hat halfway across the stage, where it landed neatly on a branch. The audience burst into applause, and for just a moment, Tennant broke character to say "Every time." Both he and the cast started laughing and needed a few seconds to pull themselves together before continuing.
2) The costumes. Oh my goodness, these were gorgeous costumes. Virtually everyone was dressed in shades of white and cream, with Berowne and Rosaline, as well as Armando and Moth, as the primary exceptions.
Credit: Geraint Lewis/The Independent
3) David Tennant and Nina Sosanya (Rosaline) have performed together many times, and their comfort level with each other really shows. They can flirt with the best of 'em.
4) The play was bawdy and even a little rowdy in the best Shakespearean tradition. The actress playing Jacquenetta did things with the handle of a butter churn that made me wonder if the parents in the audience were covering their children's eyes, and during Berowne's speech at the end of Act III, Scene i, Tennant interacted with the audience, pointing out a lady with crossed arms ("Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms") and smirking at a man he'd randomly picked to illustrate "Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces."
5) Moment of Distraction #1: Did I mention the Scottish accent? And the stubble?
6) Moment of Distraction #2: When meeting Rosaline, Berowne unties his shirt and starts rubbing his chest. Right in front of us.
7) Moment of Distraction #3: Our seats were just a little above eye level with the tree:
Credit: Jamie Wallace/Rex
8) Moment of Distraction #4: During Berowne's long speech about love at the end of Act III, Scene iii, Tennant whipped off his jacket and opened up most of his shirt. The interior dialogue in my brain went something like this:
Rational Brain: Ooh, look, he's doing that incredibly long speech! The beautiful speech about why it's okay for the court to drop their vow of chastity and fall in love with the women! The one you were wondering how anyone could possibly memorize!
Fangirl Brain: GUH.
Um. Anyway. Hamlet.
After a short break at the B&B, followed by a nice dinner at a Café Rouge, we headed back to the theatre for the next play. Unlike LLL, the set for Hamlet is nothing more than a gigantic mirrored wall at the back of the stage, with occasional additions: a throne, a bed and dresser, an open grave. The first scene, played almost entirely in pitch black with the actors using flashlights, was properly creepy, as was Patrick Stewart as the Ghost.
It's almost impossible for me to say something about this production that hasn't been said before, so I'll stick to praising the actors, who were incredibly good, especially Stewart, Oliver Ford Davies (Polonius), and of course, David Tennant. Although I felt Tennant didn't truly hit his stride until the "get thee to a nunnery" scene with Ophelia, once he was on, he swung effortlessly between sanity and madness. Patrick Stewart, meanwhile, was Claudius, playing the king as a charming, seductive, and very dangerous snake. And Davies was possibly the best Polonius I've seen, steering away from the silly, doddering old man portrayal Polonius often gets and bringing in enough seriousness that you could believe Polonius was once the sharpest advisor in the court who has simply begun a slow decline into senility.
(Wait, maybe I do have one question I haven't seen addressed elsewhere: if you have a two-story tall reflective surface that gets partially shattered during the course of the play (when Hamlet shoots Polonius), how in the hell do you replace it every night? It would be far too expensive, difficult, and time-consuming to use actual glass mirrors, but the surface legitimately looked shattered (as opposed to the optical illusion of shattered glass), so I'm dying to know how the RSC managed this little trick.)
And finally, from the purely shallow perspective (because I know I'm not the only one here looking at this from the shallow end), there were a couple of Moments of Distraction that stood out: the first, the scene with the Mousetrap, with Tennant in a tuxedo (always a major, major plus); and the second, all the scenes in which he was barefoot, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and had his hair sticking in all directions. See, the t-shirt was perhaps a little ... short. Short enough that whenever he raised his arms enough you could see a couple of inches of belly and that part where it starts to curve down towards his groin and I think my brain completely short-circuited during some of those moments. (Look, I said this was the shallow portion, okay?)
In conclusion, Hamlet good, Tennant hot, and oh my God, was this trip ever worth a year's worth of planning. I'm ready to go back now, and not just because I don't think I've fully readjusted to my time zone. Hopefully I can convince
columbina to go to England next year, and maybe even sneak across the Channel to Paris for a day or two.Thus endeth the report. More photos in the England 2008 photoset on Flickr, if you haven't already gone to look.