Dickinson College Humanities Program in Norwich

During our time in London we’ve had the opportunity to attend many theatre performances. As I chose to see the optional plays as well, the total count comes to 6: Troilus and Cressida, Arcadia, All’s Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, Pitmen Painters, and Blood Brothers. Although I could probably write an entire paper on each of the plays, I would actually like to discuss the three Shakespeare plays I saw, especially the differences in the theatres where they were performed: The National Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe.

The first Shakespeare performance we saw was Troilus and Cressida. To be honest, I wasn’t all that excited about the story when I read the play over the summer as it was not as engaging as his more famous plays I was familiar with already. Therefore, I wasn’t too excited to stand for three hours through a play that I thought would be rather boring. The experience at the Globe was exactly opposite of what I was expecting, though. I loved being so close to the actors that I could see every minute facial expression. Seeing the live performance was also much more entertaining than reading it and I learned that you really must see a Shakespeare play to truly appreciate all of the subtleties that are often lost in the text.

All’s Well That Ends Well was performed in the Olivier Theatre of The National Theatre.  The Olivier seats about 1200 people and is styled after a Greek amphitheatre. During our tour of the National Theatre, we learned that this semi-circular shape allows the actors to maintain a connection with the entirety of the audience.  While this may be a better set-up than the raised stage in the front, especially for Shakespeare, one still has the experience of the lights going down and watching the events unfold from afar. I definitely did not feel a personal connection with the actors and at many points I could barely see their faces or expressions. Overall, I felt kind of far away and uninvolved. I found the play to be mediocre. It had some funny parts, but none were all that “laugh-out-loud.” I don’t necessarily think that this play was any worse than Shakespeare’s other plays as it is such a well-known title; I simply think I felt disengaged with the performance.

The Olivier

As You Like It proved to me my love for Shakespeare’s Globe. This performance was so incredibly interactive I enjoyed every second of it. At first, I regretted opting for the groundling ticket as I had just come from giving my walking tour, but I later came to realize it was the best place to be for the performance. During the play, the actors walked through the audience and even acted out the wrestling scene in the front of the groundling section. There were numerous points during the show when the actors made side comments about the audience that could not be heard from the seats farther away.

The Globe

The style of the stage at the Globe is the way Shakespeare intended his works to be performed. We’ve heard some criticism about the Globe, especially from A.N. Wilson, because of its links to Disney, its appeal to tourists, etc., etc. I don’t necessarily disagree with such observations, but I do think the Globe deserves some justification. There are few venues where one can see Shakespeare’s plays performed in this manner, and frankly I feel this is the best way to see these performances.

Although I have blogged, to some extent, about most academic things I have done in London, I feel that I have a better impression of most things now than I did at the beginning of the stay.  Along this vein, I feel the need to revise, or just plain state, my opinions on the “Big Five” topics – parks, churches, museums, theatres, and pubs.

I have now been to five of the Royal Parks in London.  Green Park, Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Regent’s Park, and St James’ Park are all very similar and yet very different in their own ways.  I found Green Park, situated very close to Buckingham Palace, to have the most unfriendly atmosphere of the five.  There is very little to Green Park.  There are trees, benches, grass, the ever-popular lawn chairs for rent, and beautiful ornate gates facing Buckingham Palace.  I think the reason I found the park so cold is that it was, well, too green.  There were no flowers or water features (except for one fountain commemorating the Canadians), just trees, grass, and benches. 

This is vastly different from the other four parks I visited.  St James’ Park, Hyde Park, Regent’s Park, and Kensington Gardens all were beautifully landscaped with brightly colored flowers, clean fountains, scultpures, and natural or constructed water features.  In Hyde Park, Regent’s Park, and Kensington Gardens it was easy to forget that you were in the middle of a pollution-filled city.  As I am not much of a city person, it was extremely refreshing for me to not be able to hear or see traffic for a while.  With Green Park and St James’ Park, I couldn’t shake that feeling.  However, I am a firm believer that parks, whether or not they are within city limits, always make people feel healthier.  For this reason and the sheer beauty that the parks portrayed in their different ways, I understand why I did not only see tourists, but the people of London as well. 

Gates towards Buckingham Palace from Green Park

Churches and other places of worship are an integral part of societies throughout the world.  Throughout our time in London, we have been fortunate enough to visit Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral, a Sikh gurdwara, and a Hindu temple.  Of these four I enjoyed St Paul’s Cathedral the most from a purely historical standpoint and the Hindu temple most from a cultural perspective.  St. Paul’s is one of the most recognizable and interesting buildings in London.  It not only houses some of the most important military remains in the country (the Duke of Wellington and Admiral Nelson), but it was one of the most iconic images of WWII Britain.  I also found it to be less like a museum where I felt like hop-scotching around graves in the floor (Westminster Abbey) and much more like a place of worship. 

I enjoyed the Hindu temple for very different reasons.  Although there was a definite sense of it being a tourist attraction, with the gift shop in the lobby and the interpretive centre with tiny models of Hindu gods, the temple was still very obviously, well, a temple.  Before going there, I had no idea what Hinduism was like.  I knew that there are multiple gods and that one is an elephant, but I didn’t know about their dedication to peace and volunteer work.  What really struck me about it was that the intricate carving and craftsmanship of the facility was all done by volunteers.  I think that this cultural experience was only heightened by being able to observe a service in the sanctuary that was so unlike my own Roman Catholic faith.

St Paul's Cathedral - a symbol and a place of worship

I had very mixed experiences with museums in London.  Some, like the Victoria and Albert, I just didn’t seem to understand in the amount of time I spent there.  However, I think that if I went back and dedicated a day to the facility, I would appreciate how the seemingly-random exhibits link together much better.  (I did enjoy the items on display in the V&A, I just had an issue with the layout of the museum.)  Other museums, like the Museum of London and the Docklands Museum, were put together in a very fluid and informative manner that I enjoyed greatly.  My two biggest museum issues were with the British Museum and Sir John Soane’s Home/Museum.  Grace and I wrote extensively on our thoughts on the British Museum, so instead of repeating everything, I’ll just give a brief summary: why are all of these amazing artifacts that have no connection to Britain in the British Museum? 

The Sir John Soane Museum is a completely different story.  I appreciated that the museum was free and displayed an extremely eclectic collection, but please never make me go back there ever again!  It was the single most claustrophobic place I have ever been in my entire life with possibly one exception.  Call it a personal thing, I do not like it when random pieces of monuments are mounted on the ceiling directly above my head.  I am also not a big fan of walking into a room in a house and having literally hundreds of sculpture eyes staring at me from every surface around me.  I disliked it so much that I could not even finish going through it, and anyone who has been in a museum with me will know that I read and see as much as I possibly can.  I don’t understand why that creepy building perfectly-suited to be a haunted house at Halloween is called a museum.  (Please if you can attempt to explain it to me, go right ahead!)

Theatre is a subject I have talked about in a couple of different posts (Observations on Accessibility and Blood Painters and Pitmen Brothers), however, I have not discussed theatre in general.  I was lucky enough to see Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well That Ends Well, Arcadia, The Pitmen Painters, and Blood Brothers.  Each of these theatre experiences were extremely different, but all valuable in their own ways.  Troilus and Cressidawas shown in the Globe Theatre and we had groundling tickets that forced us to stand for the 3 hour performance.  The actual standing wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, but the best thing about the show was being quite literally three-to-four feet away from the actors on stage.  (Actually, it was slightly amusing when Hector died and was lying 3 feet away in our line of sight for the last 20 minutes of the play!) The staging of this Shakespearian play was vastly different to All’s Well That Ends Well, which was put on in the National Theatre.  In the Globe, the sets are quite minimal because they have to perform four or five different shows on the same stage in the space of a few days.  The set for All’s Well That Ends Well was much more elaborate and specialized for the show.  Rather than the reliance on the actors and the costumes that the Globe used to tell you where the play was occurring, All’s Well That Ends Well used a dark set with elaborate staircases to add to the mood of characters and the dialogue.

Much like with Troilus and Cressida, the set for Arcadia was also pretty simple.  Although the play took place in two different years, it was set in exactly the same room with almost all of the same props.  This was a very effective way to stage the show and allowed for the writer, Tom Stoppard, to do some very interesting things with the characters from both time periods, like when he had them all in the room at the same time, oblivious to each other.  I particularly enjoyed the way that this play was set and how basic it was.  It was vastly different from the more complicated sets of The Pitmen Painters, which included projection screens, and Blood Brothers, which had lots of windows for the Devil/God character to peer creepily out of. 

This final subject I have not blogged about at all.  Pubs are an integral part of British culture.  That said, pubs are also an integral part of Irish culture, so I experienced pub life when I lived in Ireland.  British pubs and Irish pubs have a lot of similarities and differences.  In both places, you must push viciously up to the bar in order to get your food and drink, you have to be 18 to have alcohol, smoking must be done outside, and there are usually way too many people in the pub for you to feel comfortable.  Oh, and you always pay way more than you think you should for your drink.  I’ve been to a couple of pubs in London and have found that they are all fairly similar.  The bartenders are nice, but kind of frantic; the food is good, and usually relatively cheap; and the music is God-awful 1980s or techno playing at volumes that are way too loud.  The first two are cohesive with pretty well every Irish pub I’ve ever been in, the third is not.  Irish pubs play good music… or at least much better music than I’ve heard here!  There are a lot of pubs that have a band playing traditional Irish music in front of you in the pub for pints and there are also a lot that play modern music at volumes that make my ears want to cry – but at least the music isn’t a Cher and Meatloaf duet accompanied with the weirdest music video I have ever seen in my entire life.  (This particular musical masterpiece was played in The Court the other day.  I never would have thought of that particular combination, but oooooookkkkkkkkkk.)  Truth be told, I just want to find a comfortable pub with some good music and that will make me just as happy as George Orwell’s fictitious Moon Under Water.

This Monday I experienced my first bank holiday. Because of our full schedule here this month it didn’t seem any different from any other day here. This held true until I wandered down Tottenham Court Road and realized that just about everything was closed.  With just a handful of museums open I decided to use the time to visit one I hadn’t been to yet: The Victoria and Albert Museum. 

I had been told great things about the V&A museum by classmates who had been there within the past few days so I went in with pretty high expectations. After seeing the first exhibit  based on Great Britain from the 1600’s-1800’s I was not impressed. Boy would this opinion change. I walked up to the first floor and entered a giant gallery filled with all kinds of sculptures. This was easily the best sculpture gallery I had seen so far in London and I spent about 15 minutes walking through it and admiring. As I continued to walk through the entirety of the first floor I was absolutely astounded  by the variety of exhibits this museum had to offer. Some highlights included a detailed exhibit on fashion, a room filled with giant monuments including a cross and decorative pillars and an exhibit on the Middle East and its textiles.

After a good hour spent on the first floor I ventured up to the third floor of the museum. As soon as I stepped into the silver exhibit I was in awe. I spent at least a half an hour admiring and studying silver used and manufactured in different time periods and parts of the world. My favourite was a giant punch bowl made entirely of silver. There were many other exciting exhibits on the third floor including one on theatre and a print exhibit featuring one of my late grandmother’s favorite authors, Beatrix Potter. My last stop on the third floor was the jewelry exhibit. In addition to being aesthetically pleasing the exhibit featured a timeline of jewelry that was considered fashionable since the start 18th century and  a few small personal collections. 

I could have spent at least another three hours in the Victoria and Albert museum but I decided to hold off for another day. The thing that impressed me  the most about this museum was the variety of exhibits. Just about every other museum I had visited so far in London I knew what to expect going in. The V&A featured anything and everything and had no qualms about doing so. I found this both refreshing and exciting.

The rest of my bank holiday was filled with a trip to the theatre. Upon request the entire class got “dolled up” for a performance at the  Duke of York’s Theatre near Leicester Square. We saw Arcadia, a Tom Stoppard play that turned out to be both extremely funny and thoughtful.  The class seemed a bit skeptical of how the play would be at first glance since we couldn’t see much of the stage but as soon as the curtain went up things improved immediately. Neil Pearson’s performance as Bernard Nightingale was unmatched and fit perfectly with Samantha Bond’s character of Hannah Jarvis. The play was not only entertaining and made me think but also fit in perfectly with our program since it contrasted the humanities and sciences. 

Ever since seeing Troilus and Cressida last Friday I have been craving anything to do with the theatre. This happened to be perfect timing as we spent all of Tuesday focusing on the stage. In the morning we had a fantastic conversation with Rick Fisher , a Dickinson alum  of 1979 and a recipient of two Tony Awards, most recently for his work on Billy Elliot: The Musical. It was fascinating speaking with a Dickinson graduate who had simply worked his way up from the very bottom of the London theatre scene. 

In the afternoon the class toured the National Theatre. Our tour guide took us through all parts of the building including the three main theaters. The Olivier, which is the largest, seats about 1100 people and does not have a bad seat in the house. My favorite part about the Olivier was that  the main stage could be divided in half and raised and lowered at any time. In addition to the Olivier we also viewed the Cottesloe Theatre a black box that has the capability of being transformed into just about anything. All of the chairs in front of the stage can fold down and the risers they sit on can be pushed in creating additional stage space. The tour guide described a play  that had been recently performed in the Cottesloe where the actors were mixed in with the audience. This amazed me.  We also viewed the Lytellton Theatre where our class will be viewing the Pitmen Painters together next week. The other part of the tour that really amazed me was the props department. From the crocodile in Peter Pan to a severed head no prop was impossible  to create. 

After the tour of the National Theatre many of us were so excited about coming back that we decided to go see Shakespeare’s All’s Well That End’s Well, the play taking place in the Olivier currently. My reaction to the play was mixed. The theatre itself was amazing. The props, sets and lighting blew my mind and the acting was good overall. Despite all of these positives I didn’t particularly enjoy the actual play, especially the ending. It seemed impractical to me and unlikely to happen in real life, even 500 years ago. 

Overall learning about theatre in London has been a lot of fun. In addition to seeing a variety of shows we’ve gotten a chance to see London theatre from many different perspectives. From the traditional globe experience to hearing about small fringe productions from Rick Fisher to a tour of all three main facilities at the National Theatre we have received a wide perspective of how this popular activity has influenced the city as a whole and in all different ways, shapes and forms.

Tonight I went to the play All’s Well That Ends Well which was preformed at the on the Olivier stage at the National Theater. Though I greatly enjoyed the performance of the play, I question Shakespeare’s choice for the title.

(spoiler alert) The play began with the main character, Helena (who loves Bertram), cures the King of France of his illness and is therefore granted the choice of any man she desires for her husband. So naturally she chooses Bertram, whom does not like Helena (mostly on account of her social standing) and is appalled by the thought of taking her hand in marriage. However, he cannot turn down Helena’s marriage proposal by the King’s decree, so instead he decides to become a soldier and leaves Helena before he beds her. After leaving he sends Helena a letter saying that he will have no wife in France until Helen is impregnated with his child and possesses his family ring. After reading this Helena leaves France in search of her husband. When she arrives in Florence (where the war is) she decides to stay with an old widow and her daughter, Diana (with whom Bertram is in infatuated). She then convinces Diana to seduce Bertram and to blind fold him before Helena comes in and makes love to him (Bertram still believing that he is with Diana). So, through Diana Helena comes to possess Bertram’s ring and becomes pregnant with his child. At the end of the play she confesses what she has done and Bertram vows to always love her, yeah right!

All is not well at the end, for Bertram is still a jerk and Helena is still married to him. This is the classic story of many present day teen pregnancies: boy does not like girl so girl decides to trap boy by forgetting to take her pill (opps!) and boy is stuck putting up with girl until the child is raised. In All’s Well That Ends Well is Shakespeare trying to suggest that this method of entrapment actually effective? Or is he poking fun at those who believe it to be effective? Neither of these options make the play contingent with the play’s fairytale motif. Also, both options make this comedy funny only in a very twisted way.

I can see why this play is considered one of Shakespeare’s problem plays. Like Troilus and Cressida, it seems to confuse and confound the audience. Why did Shakespeare choose to make a mockery of the Greek and Trojan heroes in Troilus and Cressida? And why did he choose to name a tale about a teen pregnancy All’s Well That Ends Well?

However, I can see the value in All’s Well That Ends Well as a social commentary. Though the King assures Bertram that he will personally boost Helena’s position in society, Bertram still does not want to marry her because she is the daughter of a poor physician and he is a count. This reflects the English society’s belief at the time that a person’s class is permanent and does not change from the day they are born to the day that they die. The fact that Bertram finally accepts Helena once she is pregnant also reflects the norm of the time: that if a man impregnates a woman then he is forever after responsible for her well-being. In All’s Well That Ends Well Shakespeare uses these two social to show the disjointed nature of the British upper-class’ social rules. In this way I feel that Shakespeare is trying to critique the contradictory nature of these social guidelines. I am very interested in how other people read this play.