The Globe Theatre

I sorted out the tickets stubs that I have been carrying in my purse today. I have been pasting them all to a cardboard box in my bedroom, making myself a collage of where I have been. Re-doing musical theatre is to have all of the fun of a second look at staging and music I already love: Love Never Dies, Les Miserable, Oliver. Jersey Boys and Sister Act.

On the side of the wonder of what is new, I have seen Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; Dirty Dancing; Sweet Charity, All the Fun at the Fair, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Hair and A Midsummer’s Night Dream.
We caught a bus along the Strand, hopped off to dash across the Millennium Bridge and were in our Globe Theatre seats about three minutes before the performance started. The theatre looked just as the books have said it would – the commoners gathered together in front of the stage, ready to stand for 3 hours and watch the performance, while those who could afford seats (and who could afford the added bonus of a cushion and a chair back to sit on the hard bench) sat under cover that rims the theatre.

The players were clever, taking care of the anachronism of jet planes flying overhead, to pause in the declamation of their lines, or to do body jokes while waiting for the sound of the jets to move on. They walked through the audience, one even climbing on the back of a strong man standing there. When the queen and king sit down to finally watch the play that Bottom has been producing, they ran into the theatre, the queen sitting right by Glen and enjoying the stage performance as much as the rest of us. They were dressed in period costumes – the wrong period, the 1920’s. They played banjos, danced the Charleston and still took us right to the centre of one of Shakespeare’s most accessible comedies.

I don’t care how many times I have seen the jokes of the players, I hear myself laughing out loud. David commented to me that I was into the play long before others in the audience. The man in front of me was turning around to see if there was something happening on the row behind him, which he was not privy to. He should have kept his eye on the stage. That is where the action was happening. I think it was the gestures of the players, the looks, and the toss of a head – I was responding to all of that before I even heard the lines were spoken.

As the night fell the air got cooler. The dampness from the Thames shifted into the theatre and the air was cold and deep. I was glad for an extra blanket and gloves that Wyona had suggested we bring.

I haven’t been to Westminster Abbey until this trip. Laynie and I arrived as the church was opening and we signed up for a 1 ½ hour tour led by one of the Vergers – as with anything else, so worth the money. She went off to meet others of her family by noon, but I stayed behind to listen to the audio tapes and seeing Chaucer’s tomb, looking down at the place where Dickens is buried, seeing the statue over Shakespeare’s grave, standing in Poet’s Corner and having lines from all of the famous poems slip through my brain – only small phrases, but enough that I knew I could go back and find the whole poem in any anthology.

Part of the early church still exists, the Romanesque arches still there, 1000 years later. And painting newly uncovered when renovations were done. As well we saw the newly cleaned vaulted and bolted domes in the Chapel of Henry VII – seen as they were in their pristine form hundreds of years ago.

The week seems to have covered thousands of years -- from Chaucer to Hair to Westminister Abbey and then Wyona and me finishing off the week by getting tickets for the Eurostar so that we can chunnel the English channel. Now how surreal is all of that.

Arta