Tuesday - The Globe and Coram Boy

So. Best day ever.

I left the house sort of early because I wanted to be able to be leisurely about getting to the south bank of the Thames where the Globe is. It was, quite simply, an amazing experience. Especially when we got to go stand up on the stage, and now we get to see a production there in March. It's an extra thing and is going to cost us a few pounds, but the program is covering part of it, which is okay with me. :)

( So, the Globe! )

Coram Boy was... the single most amazing theatre experience I've ever had. I'm going back on Friday night at my own expense not because I want to, but I need to. This is a full on need to go see it again before it closes (National Theatre is a revolving rep, plays will be on for only a few weeks at a time.) I am very excited because it's coming to Broadway in the spring, despite the fact that I live nowhere near Broadway. It deserves it. I hope it's very well received and that many many people feel as strongly about this play as I do.

I have never just. Oh god. You guys saw what I meant. I have no idea how I'm supposed to moderate discussion on this show, because nothing I feel for it is moderate, or even rational.

I'm going to write the cast and crew a thank you note and tell them exactly what I wrote here yesterday. If it were me as them, I would love hearing it. Not that I'm egotistical enough to think anything I would do would be this amazing.

Wednesday - City Walk and Thankfully There Is Moonlight!

Sarah had told us that this was going to be an omg, strenuous day! so I prepared for something that tried my patience even more than usual. At least I didn't have to hear again about how London was really the City, one square mile, surrounded by other buroughs, blah blah blah, ad nauseam. I'm getting a little sick of that.

So in one of my first posts where I said the thing by St. Paul's Cathedral was the Monument to the Great Fire? I lied. Sorry. :x

( The Monument. )

After this, Sarah dismissed us and everybody and their dog flocked to the nearest tube station. I was (and still am, actually) getting a little sick of most of the people in the group (see this rant), so I split off and hopped a bus to Waterloo station because I wanted to go back to the National Theatre bookstore and buy a copy of Coram Boy - novel and script. (I also ended up buying Rock 'n' Roll, but that has nothing to do with the price of tea in China).

( I wound up going down Fleet Street. Meat pies, anyone? )

At night, we hopped a train at Charing Cross Station to Greenwich, where we were to see Thankfully, There is Moonlight! (yes, the exclamation point was in the title, I wasn't that excited about it). It was a very intimate space above a pub, I can't imagine that it seated more than fifty or so people.

The play itself felt like the actors were playing to a much bigger space than they had, and I was just sort of confused by it. It's originally in Portugese and this was the English premiere, and I guess I enjoyed it (particularly the second act because I had some Smirnoff during the interval and it made me very happy), but I dunno. I felt like I should have been more connected to it than I was, but I think it had the same effect as if the average Portugese person had seen 1776 without any background of American history. I felt like "So what?" Which annoyed me a bit because I don't like that feeling, but that was that. That said, I liked being that close to the actors and the space. There was a point when one of the actors was monologuing and he was staring right at the girl sitting next to me - not off into space in her general direction, at her. It was intense. I felt like I shouldn't move because then he would be looking at me. XD

Also, the big important bad guy kept sitting on his coattails and I'm not going to lie. That annoyed me. I can't be scared of a guy who sits on his own coattails.