Romeo and Juliet at the Globe

April 23rd: Shakespeare's birthday / death day.

Courtesy of Mary Jane at the ICA, us Tisch in London students got free tickets to see opening night of "Romeo and Juliet" at the Globe on April 23rd.  They were groundling passes, which meant standing room underneath the stage, just as it was in Shakespeare's time.

I squeaked in at 7:33 for a 7:30 performance, just in time to miss the announcements about cell phones (just as we would have in Shakespeare's time), and listen to the prologue, which goes something like this:

"Two households both alike in dignity

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene;

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,

Whose misadventured, piteous overthrows

Doth with their death bury their parents strife.

The fearful passage of their death-marked love

And the continuance of their parents rage,

Which, but their children's end naught could remove

Is now the two-hours traffic of our stage.

The which, if you, with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend."

This just so happens to be the text we have used since freshman year for vocal warm-ups at Adler.  Needless to say, lots of us knew it well.

Unfortunately for the production, they didn't exactly adhere to Shakespeare's guideline of "two- hours traffic of our stage."  It really was more like "three and a half-hours traffic," and considering most of us agreed following the show we didn't believe at all that Romeo and Juliet truly loved each other, this sent the production as a whole below expectations.  I will say there were some remarkably good performances, especially from Mercutio, Benvolio, and Peter the clown, three actors with impeccable comic timing and vocal mastery of the verse even in such a cavernous space.  (At times even they were drowned out by boeing 747's passing overhead--just as they would have in Shakespeare's time.)

Juliet was played by a 17 and a half year old British actress who evidently was feeling the pressure of opening night.  For the most part, she was believable and poised, except when she dropped and muddled lines in the famous "Gallop apace" speech.  Romeo was about 25, but he seemed too in love with the language he spoke to care about any other scene partners.  Perhaps this was a character choice, but it wasn't too effective.  

In general, this production seemed to perpetuate a stereotype about Brit's acting Shakespeare: that they rely solely on the verse to tell the story.  Granted, this is a much better strategy than relying on the implied emotions in the text, as some American actors have been accused of doing, but there were moments (such as Romeo's reaction to his best friend Mercutio's death) that simply didn't work because actors just "said the words," rather than being in the situation.  As with most things, the right answer is somewhere in the middle, but it did make for a rather wooden production (no pun intended).

Nothing, however, gets around the fact that this was a packed house at the Globe on a warm April evening in London.  Despite the productions flaws, conditions were perfect, and it was a magical experience.

Hammersmith Stroll

Just an update on school related stuff:  I am now officially done with the RADA program, having received my "Shakespeare in Performance" diploma following our final showing of "Measure for Measure" last Tuesday.  I'm going to miss Shakespeare, but there's lots of the UK left to explore.

One of my Christmas gifts this year was a box containing 50 London city walks.  Anna and I picked No. 46 at random and set off on a warm evening two Sundays ago to Hammersmith, a suburb southwest of downtown London.

It took us a while to find the route they had mapped out, because the first step was to pass underneath a "giant overpass" and head toward the Thames.  After getting out of the tube, the chore was not finding the giant overpass, but getting around it.  (They have a system of herding pedestrians in London via railings on the sidewalk, making it impossible to cross streets in places you might need to.  It's worst when you're stuck on the street side of the railing.)  Eventually, we crossed the road and happened upon the old copper-plated bridge crossing the Thames.

We made a right at the bridge and passed the riverside pubs and cottages.  Some of it reminded me of Nantucket: the old homes covered in wisteria with small front garden gates.  Rickety old houseboats lined the docks.

We also witnessed, in real time, the rising tides of the Thames, and were nearly caught by them.  We climbed down from the docks to the rocky shore, out onto a peninsula, spotting a black swan cruising in the stream along the way.  After about twenty minutes on the peninsula, we headed back to the docks, only to find the stream had started to approach on either side of us, and before our eyes, the peninsula became an island.

On our way back to the tube later in the evening, we had drinks at the White Lion pub, where we sat outside and watched a jazz band play the Flinstone's theme song.  After a beer and a burger, we were ready to head home back to King's Cross.

Easter Ireland

I was in Ireland for the birth of my niece, V.W. Harvey on April 10th.  Phil, Jon, Joel and I crashed for three nights at my good friend Meghan's apartment in the heart of Dublin at Temple Bar.  We spent two days outside the city, hiking in Howth on the eastern coast, and south of Dublin, in the Wicklow mountains.

It was Good Friday evening when we first arrived at Meghan's place, and we soon discovered there was no alcohol on sale anywhere in the city (apparently, this is the one day when the Irish actually don't drink).  This was probably all for the best because we had a long hike ahead of us on Saturday.

Ireland in early April is probably the greenest place on Earth.  The hiking in Wicklow was arrestingly beautiful.  I was a little motion sick as we rolled through the country side, passing sheep pastures and old country cottages, but off the bus we treated ourselves to large servings of lamb stew (evidently some of the lamb that I passed on the drive) and we had satisfied stomachs for our late afternoon hike.

That night, back from the hike, we decided to make up for a sober Friday evening and hit up the bar.  One of Meghan's friends from the Tisch Dublin program documents a band in Ireland, so we got free admittance to watch them play at a loud, three-storied, pub club.  That's when I got a call from my girlfriend Anna saying she noticed that Lizzy Cocks had posted on my facebook wall congratulating me for being an uncle.  So, whatever old people say, facebook has its merits.  We rushed out of the club to grab a round of whiskey in true Irish fashion in honor of the niece, and I headed back to Meg's apartment to call my brother and congratulate him (for all his hard work in bringing Virginia into the world).

The next morning I went to Easter mass at St. John's, a Catholic church outside of Temple Bar.  We slept a little late, so we were on time for the eleven o'clock service.  To be totally frank, it was one of the most boring Easter services I've been to.  The only really entertaining part was listening to an old lady with huge, red-rimmed glasses do the first two readings in the thickest Irish accents I had heard all weekend:

"An' den dey touk Jaisus an' dey naayled 'im up on uh tree."

We had an American couple sitting in front of us.  I could tell by the husband's huge Pittsburg Steelers bomber jacket.  He got particularly doused by the holy water as the father passed down the isle and the wife leaned into him, smiling:

"Does it burn?"

Not exactly the most formal of services to be expected on Easter Sunday, but I still felt pious nonetheless.

We spent the rest of the day touring the Jameson whiskey factory north of the River Liffey.  Joel, Meghan, and I "volunteered" to be post-tour whiskey testers.  At the factory bar, we sampled Jameson and compared it with JD and Johnny Walker scotch.  I had a good buzz for the rest of the Easter afternoon.

After a brief tour of Trinity College on Monday morning, we flew back to London with a solid Dublin experience under our belts.  But most importantly, I was grateful to hear that Virginia made it into the world safe and sound.  I can't wait to meet her!

Biggie in London

A little longer hiatus than I had hoped, but we're back in business.

The second half of spring break I spent with my brother.  He arrived at King's Cross around 10:30 pm Wednesday night, March 11th and we made a fruitless attempt to pop into a pub for a nightcap pint.  (Apparently, I didn't know until now that London pubs close on weekdays at 11 pm.)  Needless to say, this didn't bode well for the start of the trip, but we made up for it in a hurry.

On Thursday morning we hit up some of the touristy spots in London: Brick Lane, a long, cobblestone street teeming with Indian restaurants.  After a tasty mimosa and tikka massala meal, we made our way South toward the River Thames for a look at St. Paul's Cathedral, then across the Millennium Bridge to see Jackson Pollack, Claude Monet, and many others at the power-plant-esque Tate Modern building.  On our way out, a friendly older British gentlemen caught my attention and asked me to take a survey.  He bumbled around with some papers for a while before asking me ten minutes worth of questions about the exhibit.  In the end, I couldn't even tell him who sponsored the exhibits, which was probably not what he wanted to hear.  Still, I felt like seeing such fantastic work for free obligated me to answer some questions

That evening, Pete and I paid homage to a restaurant that has played a big part in family traditions over the past two decades: Trader Vics.  This one was particularly cool because it was in the basement of the London Hilton.  We walked down a spiral wooden staircase into a low-ceilinged, bungalow-aquarium atmosphere.  The bar is situated in the center of the action, visible from all tables.  On Mom and Dad's bidding in celebration for my 21st, Pete and I treated ourselves to Mai Tai's, Navy Groggs, Bongo Bongo Soup, Crispy Duck and Pu-Pu Platters.  We also paid 7 pounds for a large bottle of Fiji.  (Water and bread are never considered complimentary items at British restaurants, a hard pill to swallow this semester.)  Nevertheless, it was a mouth-watering, savory meal, one that harkened back to the fond memories we had shared in other Trader Vics halfway across the world.  Biggie has now been to five different Trader Vics: one in Beverly Hills, two in San Francisco, one in Emeryville (the home base) and now in London.

On Friday we visited the Prime Meridian, in Greenwich, just southeast of the city of London, exactly zero degrees longitude.  It's certainly an arbitrary location for the middle of the world; nevertheless, the world's clocks would be completely chaotic.  There we saw a bust of Edmond Halley, man who discovered the famous comet that passes Earth's orbit once every 76 years.  We thought it would be appropriate to take a picture, seeing as we had just been to Trader Vics, a place where Dad has consistently used the gag: "Oh, look it's Halley's Comet.  Taxi!" but they did not allow photos in the observatory.  We were still able to photograph a meteorite, the oldest object in the solar system currently on Earth, but we were reprimanded by observatory staff.

That night we went to see the late showing of a Burlesque Carbaret, where we witnessed a double-jointed man stick himself through two tennis rackets.  We also watched a woman play a kazoo with her vagina to the tune of "God Bless America."   One day this might be my line of work.  Aim high.

The highlight of the trip was, undoubtedly, our trip to Arsenal to see the football match between Arsenal and the Blackburn Rovers.  We arrived about two and a half hours before game time and wandered around the stadium looking for a box office.  When we discovered there was no chance of getting day-of-game seats there, (even in a stadium of 60,000 capacity these games sell out three weeks in advance) we tried our luck in the very classy scalper community.  Unfortunately, most scalpers we passed were looking to purchase tickets.  Also, they asking us in hushed voices, mouths hidden under zipped-up bomber jackets, hands in the back of their jean pockets.  We even witnessed one exchange happen behind a pub where the scalper pulled his tickets out of a McDonald's bag.  For about two-hours, it seemed all hope was lost for watching the game...

Just as we were ready to take the tube home, we made contact.  One scalper herded us toward another friend.  He took Biggie by the shoulder and passed us off down the alley way, almost like he was giving us momentum to walk quicker.  We soon found ourselves approached by another man, a shorter bald guy who took us behind the pub looking for 300 "quid" (AKA pounds) for each ticket.  We lowered it down to 80 each, but not before carefully inspecting the tickets.

"How do we know these are real?" Pete asked.

"How do I know your money's real?" the man replied.

"OK."

"Look, I wouldn't do that to you, mate," he insisted.

Something about his tone seemed fishy, but it was our last shot, so we bought them.

We got the green lights through the stadium gates and made our way to what turned out to be terrific seats, second deck above the Arsenal side right corner.  We saw three out of the four Arsenal goals in a game in which they won, 4-0, so everyone went home happy.

On Pete and my last morning of the vacation, we made our way to the Houses of Parliament to eat lunch and watch Big Ben.  When the clock struck one, it was time to head back to King's Cross to get Biggie on the tube back to Heathrow.

A busy, but very successful vacation.  We took London by storm and won.

  

  

Spring in Spain

March 7th to the 11th, I was in Barcelona with a bunch of my RADA friends.  We woke up at 4 am to grab a double-decker bus to London Victoria station, there to take another coach to catch an 8:05 plane from Stanstead to Barcelona-Girona airport.  Traveling with four actresses and two filmmaking women, it could've been problematic, but everyone kept his or her cool, and we were especially relaxed getting off the bus from the airport to the sunny Carrer de la Marina of downtown Barcelona.

We reserved a spacious and cheap hostel just a few blocks from the Sagrada Familia, a hundred year old cathedral, still under construction, following blue prints from the late Antonin Gaudi.  The archtiecture was wild.  Elaborate carvings of bible scenes tower high into the skyline.  It reminded me of King Louie's palace in "The Jungle Book."  

Barcelona is a large

, spread-out coastal city.  We got to know the metro system pretty well in the four days I spent there.  It's another city designed on a grid, and there are a number of historical monuments

, so the metro works very intuitively and efficiently.  Intersections on the grid spread out into dia

mond shapes, which is very frustrating for the pedestrian, who has to move left and across the street, then right to get back on the block.  Plenty of space to park vespas and motorbikes, though, which is very much the vehicle of choice.  (Especially for the crooks, too, I think.  Two of my friends were robbed within two days of our being there.)

Our first night, Anna and Liz and I went to watch the fountain light show near Montjuic Palace.  It was a little corny, listening to a recording of Freddie Mercury sing "Barcelona" or Celine Dion's "My Heart will Go On" in English as water shot up in the air.  Apparently, the Belagio models its fountain off of this one, so that was pretty cool.

My favorite part of the trip was our visit to the Gaudi park up West in the hills.  On our third day there, Jon and Phil and I found a little grocery chain to buy salami and baguettes and Spanish chocolates to make some lunch while we sat under the stone caves and palm trees.  

The beach was an hour walk away from the hostel, and it was crowded even in the 55 degree weather.  On my second day, I had paella in La Barceloneta, a row of restaurants.  A little pricey, but the chorizo was lip-smackingly good.

It was certainly hard to leave, but four days was just about the right amount of time.  

Our fourth day, we visited Barcelona Cathedral in Las Ramblas, built in the 14th century, and discovered a courtyard inside with a geese-inhabited pool and palm trees!  Church in the tropics, baby.

Our last night, before hitting up the clubs in the old city called "Las Ramblas," (where you are free to purchase roosters on the street, if you so desire).  I ran down to a local fruit vender to grab some strawberries for our dessert.  (It was also a chance to dust off the old Spanish and make an old, leathery-faced Spanish friend.)  Soon, a confusing exchange ensued in which I didn't really know how many "fresas" I wanted.  

"No sé.  Siete o Ocho?"

"Bueno.  Ocho."

The man pulled out eight strawberries and put them on the scale.  It came out to about 1.63 Euro, a pretty awkward number, considering I had given him 2 Euro.  So, I put my foot down.

"Bueno.  Es que, quiero más.  Doce fresas, por favor."

The man pulled out four more and it ended up being exactly 2 Euro.

"Perfecto!"  I smiled.

"Perfecto!" the man laughed.

A lame story, but it made me happy.

More to come on the second half of spring break with Biggie M. Harvey, soon.

Birthday Bard

Sorry for the major gap in programming, here.  It's been a busy past few weeks.  I'll be doing these posts in segments over the next few days to avoid half-assing them.

On February 28th, the day before I officially turned 5 and 1/4, I went to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Shakespeare's hometown.  We met an old local off the train with our Studies in Shakespeare teacher Mandie, and the man gave us just about every tidbit of info on the town we possibly would want to know.  He told us that Stratford was once a sheep-sheering town, but it became more famous for its beer right around when Shakespeare was in secondary school, helping to explain why William was off partying in the cornfields on weeknights, or sometimes alone out there with his eventual wife Anne Hathaway.

We walked past the house where he was born, and a scary man dressed as Shakespeare's ghost was terrorizing children in the neighborhood.  He was curiously attired in seventeenth century clothing, covered in stark white paint, including his pants, his breeches, his stockings, mustache, top-hat, you name it.

"the whining schoolboy with his satchel / And shining morning face, creeping like a snail / Unwilling to school." Jacques, As You Like It

Later we hit up Shakespeare's school, which began in a chapel at 7:30 to morning prayer, then on to translating Greek and Latin until 6 pm on hard wooden benches in dim-lit rooms.  No recess, and classes met every Saturday, too.

Our guide also explained that because Shakespeare's family had no money to pay for college and school in Stratford was free, Shakespeare did not receive the same education as University wits like Ben Jonson or Christopher Marlowe.  We know this, in part, because the the Greek and Latin stories William had to read and translate based many of their rhythms in the iambic pentameter, and, of course, 60 percent of Shakespeare's plays use this verse structure.  Shakespeare had the iambic beat drilled into his creative mind from the beginning.  The university philosophy at the time was to break this mold and find new ways of expressing verse poetry.

We went on to see a matinee production of The Tempest, the last play Shakespeare wrote.  It was a production created in South Africa, with an entirely South African cast.  This production tackled head-on the issue of Apartheid, and for characters like Caliban and Ariel, the theme was a compelling factor throughout the play.  The best part about the production was its use of the space.  I sat stage right, house left, on the side of a thrust stage that protruded way out into the audience.  Being on the side didn't pose a problem, even if sometimes the actors backs were too us because we felt like we were in the world of the play.  (When I saw Twelfth Night at the RSC, it was a proscenium stage, which kept the audience distance from the front of the stage and kept the actors always facing out in a rather tired Elizabethan manner.  Not to say it wasn't good, but I'm finding the thrust is really the more effective venue for engaging an audience--at least in Shakespeare).  Spirits were South African natives with grass skirts and congas, and they even used large, 'Day of the Dead' style puppets for Ferdinand and Miranda's wedding.  The most powerful moment came when Prospero set his slave spirit Ariel free by washing the white paint off his chest with a tin basin.

After the

 show, we made an unsuccessful attempt to visit Shakespeare's grave site.  In my opinion, it was fitting that we didn't see it, because to me it was a sign that Shakespeare is still alive and well.  (Corny, I know, but I had to find some redeeming quality to getting gipped out of seeing the tombstone.)

We got back to London around 8 pm, with plenty of time to drink some beers and break out the mattresses for a birthday "Fight Night," in which my friends and I took over the ping-pong room at the dorm and wrestle till we were tired.  All in all, an excellent 21st birthday celebration!  

Stoned in Dover

Well, there was no ganja, but we did have a bunch of British teenagers moon us and throw rocks at us on the beach of the English Channel.  It was pretty witty banter between our two groups:

"Stop throwing rocks at us."

"We're not throwing rocks; we're throwing stones."

Later on, as tempers flared...

"I wanna know what you're doing throwing ROCKS at us!"

"I wanna know what you're doing in my COUNTRY!"

Just another example of two nations divided by a common language.

Other than spotting a man in a motorized wheelchair sporting an English flag and a Confederate flag, the incident with the townies was really the only hiccup to the day.  

Dover Castle was a scarily large fort built in the 11th century around a 1st century Roman Lighthouse.  The fact that we got to step inside this precarious brick building that was around since Jesus Christ's life was both awe-inspiring and disconcerting, as it probably could have toppled over at any moment.  The castle also had a large keep on the crest of the hill built by Henry II, father of King John, lead character in Shakespeare's "King John," which is the show I'll be presenting to RADAand Tisch faculty in three weeks.  My part is Philip II, King of France and King John's enemy.  It was also fun to walk out on the battlements and to do Shakespeare soliloquies while looking out over the white cliffs and the harbor.

Another cool finding was the World War II underground tunnels underneath the castle.  These subterranean hideouts were apparently where operation Dunkirk was cooked up, and where Churchill used to hang out before going out on a sea-side balcony to watch German and English fighters battle for the skies in the summer of 1941.

From there we went to a pub lunch, then out to the "stoney" beach, and then on from there to relax on top of the white cliffs and look out toward France.  At sunset, we meandered back to the train station and found a bar where we got rowdy and sang Karaoke.  At the end of the night, an older local gentlemen shook my hand and said:

"You're a great bunch.  Thanks for coming."

The lesson here, really, is you can get along with an Englishman as long as you and he have both had a couple of pints.