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Wednesday - Whitehall and Happy Days
Feb. 15th, 2007 02:53 pmSo yesterday was Valentine's Day. Lacking a Valentine as I was, I saw a Beckett play (YAY) and had some awesome chocolate ice cream. Which was good enough for me. What the hell, right?
So this'll be my last YAY LONDON post before Monday, since I leave for Wales tomorrow at noon, arriving in Haverfordwest at approximately seven PM. After I finish this post, I'm probably going to head down to Sloane Square to see if there are any cancellations for The Seagull. According to my internet it says I have thirty some hours left on my House download and, well. That's just unacceptable.
Anyway.
( A picture actually taken on Tuesday. PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE THAT THE BIRDS ARE GOING TO HAVE THE LAST LAUGH! )
Anyway, so on Tuesday in the National Gallery you can't take pictures of things because they have to regulate the light and blah blah blah curator talk and so yeah. That's why there aren't really any photos for that. Wednesday, we went to the banquet hall at Whitehall, which is the only part left of the palace complex that once stood there - it burned down in 1698, this is the example of Stuart monarchial reign, blah blah blah. Whitehall is also the street that runs from the Houses of Parliament to Trafalgar Square and is where all/most important governmental buildings are.
( Obligatory pictures. )
After we finished there we headed back to the National Gallery for a little bit, and then were let go. There was about an hour and a half until our 5:30 tour backstage of the National Theatre, so I didn't bother going back to the Albert. I bought some presents (for who? Gretchen and dad. :D) and took a nice walk back to the Embankment before crossing the river on a foot bridge to the National Theatre.
( Pictures from that walk. )
Turns out that they also light up the London Eye all pink for Valentine's Day, heh. I tried to take a picture of that but it didn't turn out at all since it was dark when I tried. But it was gorgeous.
So, at the National Theatre (Lyttelton) we saw the Samuel Beckett play Happy Days. For those of you not familiar with Samuel Beckett, he is considered an absurdist playwright, which isn't to say absurd in the way we normally think of it as, as in saying, "Today the traffic in downtown Davenport was absolutely absurd." But it stems from a book written by Martin Esslin about these four playwrights (Ionesco, Beckett, Adamov, and Genet) who wrote plays that displayed the absurdity of the human condition - it sort of stems from postmodernism and the idea of what matters if we aren't really here for a reason, and it's also connected to existentialism. That's a really shoddy explanation but it's about the best that I can do.
I love Beckett. But reading him is always... it's like pouring water through a colander. Nothing really sticks in my brain and I always feel like I'm missing something unless I'm seeing it. So seeing Beckett rather than reading it is always better for me. I was REALLY excited about this because it was one that I hadn't read before, and we were getting to see it with Fiona Shaw who is an amazing actress. Most people I know probably know her as Petunia Dursley. *g*
I have to say that it was excellent. There was a mad amount of ambiguity at the end, but it was excellent. I can't really describe it. It was a positive Beckett experience, though.
So tomorrow at noon I depart for Wales. I'm excited to see Coram Boy next week, and tour the Globe (!). A bunch of us want to try and see Equus, which from hence forth is going to be known as The Play Where Harry Potter Gets Naked. Yeah, we're a morbidly curious bunch, what do you want to make of it?
So this'll be my last YAY LONDON post before Monday, since I leave for Wales tomorrow at noon, arriving in Haverfordwest at approximately seven PM. After I finish this post, I'm probably going to head down to Sloane Square to see if there are any cancellations for The Seagull. According to my internet it says I have thirty some hours left on my House download and, well. That's just unacceptable.
Anyway.
( A picture actually taken on Tuesday. PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE THAT THE BIRDS ARE GOING TO HAVE THE LAST LAUGH! )
Anyway, so on Tuesday in the National Gallery you can't take pictures of things because they have to regulate the light and blah blah blah curator talk and so yeah. That's why there aren't really any photos for that. Wednesday, we went to the banquet hall at Whitehall, which is the only part left of the palace complex that once stood there - it burned down in 1698, this is the example of Stuart monarchial reign, blah blah blah. Whitehall is also the street that runs from the Houses of Parliament to Trafalgar Square and is where all/most important governmental buildings are.
( Obligatory pictures. )
After we finished there we headed back to the National Gallery for a little bit, and then were let go. There was about an hour and a half until our 5:30 tour backstage of the National Theatre, so I didn't bother going back to the Albert. I bought some presents (for who? Gretchen and dad. :D) and took a nice walk back to the Embankment before crossing the river on a foot bridge to the National Theatre.
( Pictures from that walk. )
Turns out that they also light up the London Eye all pink for Valentine's Day, heh. I tried to take a picture of that but it didn't turn out at all since it was dark when I tried. But it was gorgeous.
So, at the National Theatre (Lyttelton) we saw the Samuel Beckett play Happy Days. For those of you not familiar with Samuel Beckett, he is considered an absurdist playwright, which isn't to say absurd in the way we normally think of it as, as in saying, "Today the traffic in downtown Davenport was absolutely absurd." But it stems from a book written by Martin Esslin about these four playwrights (Ionesco, Beckett, Adamov, and Genet) who wrote plays that displayed the absurdity of the human condition - it sort of stems from postmodernism and the idea of what matters if we aren't really here for a reason, and it's also connected to existentialism. That's a really shoddy explanation but it's about the best that I can do.
I love Beckett. But reading him is always... it's like pouring water through a colander. Nothing really sticks in my brain and I always feel like I'm missing something unless I'm seeing it. So seeing Beckett rather than reading it is always better for me. I was REALLY excited about this because it was one that I hadn't read before, and we were getting to see it with Fiona Shaw who is an amazing actress. Most people I know probably know her as Petunia Dursley. *g*
I have to say that it was excellent. There was a mad amount of ambiguity at the end, but it was excellent. I can't really describe it. It was a positive Beckett experience, though.
So tomorrow at noon I depart for Wales. I'm excited to see Coram Boy next week, and tour the Globe (!). A bunch of us want to try and see Equus, which from hence forth is going to be known as The Play Where Harry Potter Gets Naked. Yeah, we're a morbidly curious bunch, what do you want to make of it?
