Dickinson College Humanities Program in Norwich

Probably Les Mis was my least satisfying theater going experience in London (and I did enjoy it: I enjoyed every play that I went to). It’s strange to say, because I had been wanting to see Les Mis for years.  And don’t get me wrong: everything about the play, from the acting to the lighting to the music was top notch. But somehow, the nearly perfect production left me unsatisfied.  My main problem with the play was that the plot was so full and neat that I had trouble being swept up in it.  So many important and often tragic events happened in so little time that I found myself lagging behind emotionally.  The ending was a little too neat to feel genuine; by the end mostly everyone is dead but the male and female leads (who of course end up together).  I left wanting something more, although I thoroughly enjoyed the music.

39 Steps, while probably not very innovative, and definitely not deep or reflective, felt full of energy in a way that Les Mis was not. I think that this was because I did not know what to expect going in, and the play was hilarious and unafraid to make fun of itself.  Probably the funniest moments in the entire production were those in which we were made very aware that we were watching a play: the use of windows an doors as props, and the scene on the train in which the actors responded physically to the train’s imagined movement.  More interesting and funny surprises were in the staging of the play than in the plot.  39 Steps was as much as a crowd pleaser as Les Mis, though in a different way, and it felt more alive to me.

I even found the Habit of Art more interesting than both in way, although it certainly did not hold my attention in the same way.  Risks were clearly taken, right down to the bright florescent lighting used throughout the play to create the feel of a rehearsal.  Although I had trouble sympathizing with the characters, and had a negative visceral reaction to some aspects (like the urination in the sink, and the apparent stench of the apartment), but I guess that even my negative reactions were an accomplishment on the part of the play, since they were clearly intended.  The Habit of Art stayed with me longer than the other plays we saw because it had me reflecting on why it was written as it was, and on the connection between the lives of the actor-characters and the lives of the two famous “artists” in the play within the play.  So although I was not amazed at the end of  The Habit of Art, I was definitely satisfied.

I am definitely glad that London is home to so much innovative theater, and that we had the opportunity to experience some of it.  I wish that I had time to see more plays in London, and I look forward to finding out what the theaters in Norwich have to offer.

I have attended four shows in my time in London: The Merry Wives of Windsor, 39 Steps, the Habit of Art, and Les Miserables.  I have searched and searched to find a common thread that all four would have to define the theatre in England and have yet to come across it.  There are some thematic similarities (thank you very much Jesse for pointing out the cross dressing), but overarching commonalities that I could use to define London theatre are difficult to find.

The first play that we saw in London, The Merry Wives of Windsor, was understandably a tourist trap.  It was at the New Globe (a touristy place if I’ve ever seen one) and therefore, I had pretty low expectations.  I expected a good piece of slapstick Shakespeare and that is exactly what I got.  I got a “genuine” Shakespeare experience – I stood right by the stage, listened to flippant German teenage tourists mock the English actors, and got in a good laugh.  While there was some genuine real life Brits in line in front of us (I got to witness a queue-jumping situation that would have made Kate Fox dance with joy), I felt like I was not at a real English theatre event.

39 Steps was, for me at least, the most real English theatre I witnessed.  As it was a matinee, there were distinct groups of English people, namely a group from a convalescent home and a very large group of school children.  The audience was very much stiffly British and listening to the aid in front of me explain the humor to the most ancient woman I’ve ever seen made me feel the most immersed in British life I had been to that point.  The most telling sign that I was truly experiencing British theatre was the rampant irony used in 39 Steps – most of which, I would like to point out, completely went over my head (I only knew that something funny was going on by the chuckles of my fellow theatre goers).

The Habit of Art might not have made that much of impression on me simply because I did not enjoy it.  Like most theatre I’ve participated in back home, it struck me as an upper class audience out to enjoy a night of snobbishly intellectual theatre that they could go to a cocktail party and brag about.  I know that during our tour our guide pointed out how they try to make the theatre financially accessible to everyone, but it was not something that I felt the ordinary Joe could go into an enjoy.  The topic required some degree of literary knowledge, the humor was highbrow, and the audience was mainly fashionable and wealthy people who I would guess visit the theatre frequently.  Overall, I felt no real connection to either the play or my fellow audience members.

Les Miserables was perhaps my favorite piece of theatre.  While, like The Merry Wives of Windsor, it was definitely geared towards tourists, I finally felt like I was somewhere where half the humor (and there was not much humor to choose from) was not going over my head.  I could sit back, relax, pay attention to the lighting (thanks Rick!), and enjoy a night of good music.  I loved that Les Miserables was not attempting to be anything more than it was and because of that, I was able to loosen up and enjoy the show.

The four shows that I saw in London were all enjoyable and filled their own niche in the theatre community.  Together they said nothing grand or profound about British theatre but individually had a lot to offer in terms of cultural explanation.

I have now seen a total of five shows here in London.  First, the Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe Theatre, followed by the Czech Philharmonic concert at Royal Albert Hall, Les Miserables at the Queen’s Theatre, The 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre, and The Habit of Art at the National Theatre.  For this blog post, I will focus on The 39 Steps and The Habit of Art, because I think these shows have certain things in common that are a good demonstration of British culture.

Both shows were distinctly meta-theatrical.  In The 39 Steps, costume and set changes happened right on stage and Professor Jordan proclaims the show’s self-consciousness when he is shot by a bodiless arm at the end of the show and shouts “This is supposed to be a four person cast!”  The Habit of Art is a play within a play.  Better yet, the play within the play is being rehearsed at the National Theatre, where the play is being shown.  The rehearsal of Caliban’s Day is frequently interrupted by the actors, the stage manager, and the writer to talk about the trials and tribulations of acting, writing, and theatre.  I think that both of these shows’ use of meta-theatre demonstrates the British love of irony and humor, their tendency toward self-consciousness and self-deprecation, and the Importance of Not Being Earnest Rule as defined by Kate Fox.  Meta-theatre demonstrates that the show and the playwright are not taking themselves too seriously.  When some of the class was talking during intermission, I remember Matt wondering why there couldn’t have just been a play about Auden and Britton, and why they had to go to the trouble of adding all the extra characters and putting it in a frame.  He suggested that the playwright was too worried that a serious play about Auden and Britton would not go over well.  This theory may be exactly right.  A play just about Auden and Britton may have been reviewed with an “Oh come off it” rather than a “deeply and unexpectedly moving” and a “I can think of few plays that combine wild laughter, deep emotion, and technical ingenuity with such bravura” (Charles Spencer, Telegraph, 18 November 2009).

photo credit: Google Images

photo credit: Google Images

This is still just a theory.  As a sidenote, I do think the framing had its merits.  Caliban’s Day is about the pressure to create art, the artist’s consciousness of his role and reputation as an artist, and the contriving that goes on behind the scenes with the artist’s fear of biographical information seeping into or being read into his art.  The insecure actors and writer and the ever-comforting and conciliatory stage manager are a parallel story to Auden’s and Britton’s, allowing the themes to be developed more deeply and thoroughly, applying them to theatre as well as poetry and music.

We have talked about theatre in London as being a sort of equalizer.  Anyone who can afford even fifteen pounds can get a pretty good seat for a show.  In the National Theatre, there are no restricted view seats nor are there any boxes.  Everyone is on the same footing, and to demonstrate this, we got to sit in the same row as Sir Ian McKellen at The Habit of Art.  While all of this is true, I still felt like a bit of an outsider at both of these shows.  I really enjoyed The 39 Steps, but I still had some trouble catching all of the jokes, even after having read Fox and lived in London for a month.  Many of the jokes, such as the jokes about Welsh politics and the “sorry, sorry, sorry” sequence on the train are distinctly British, and not fully accessible to us foreigners.  The same held true with the humor in The Habit of Art.  I’m not complaining; I’m sure American movies and plays present the same problems to the British.  I do think I have a point though, in saying that the content in The Habit of Art was not accessible to just anyone.  I think in order to fully understand the play, you needed a reasonable understanding of theatre and its operations (in this respect our backstage tour helped a lot) and an understanding of Auden’s biography, his poetry and The Tempest.  It took me probably until close to intermission to grasp who all the characters were and the plotlines of both stories.  I think the play was rather intellectual, despite containing much crude humor, and perhaps did not quite match the humble and universally accessible National Theatre.

In the last month, I have seen Merry Wives of Windsor, Bedlam, Les Miserables, 39 Steps, and The Habit of Art, which is significantly more theater in a very short time than I’ve been able to see in the US. So that being said, I have to get my initial gushing about how excited I am that I’ve had this great opportunity and how it’s really great that London makes its arts so cheap to attend and accessible to the public. I say this mostly because I’m genuinely thrilled. I really can’t get over how awesome it is that I get to see all this stuff as part of a class for really cheap. I think that although Kate Fox talks about the English egalitarian sentiment as a largely hypocritical façade for a very unequal class system, the English really do an amazing job of making beauty accessible to everyone – free museums, cheap theater, beautiful parks, etc. (I also say this because my mom keeps reading my Dickinson blog – hi Mom! – and it’s a super cranky blog because American Studies has trained me that when I analyze, I must be angry and critical of society). But anyway, everyone has already talked about the accessibility of beauty. So I’m going to do the other thing that American Studies has trained me for: talk about something inappropriate and pretend it’s academic.

Today’s topic is cross-dressing. Out of all the plays I’ve seen, Les Mis was the only one that did not contain a prominent cross dressing scene, and it’s not English in origin. Bedlam was so intent on having a cross-dressing scene that it didn’t even matter that there was no explanation for it in the plot. The Habit of Art was not even a comedy, and it still had a cross-dressing scene. What part of the English psyche demands a man in drag so intently that it has become a staple of theater? 

Kate Fox would probably say it’s the “importance of not being earnest,” the idea that one must never take oneself too seriously (62, 63). Serious plays must be offset by something self-deprecating and silly, and comedies must contain some form of low brow humor to offset the perception that the jokes are too high and pleased with themselves. (American Studies Jesse would at this point start discussing: 1. The sexism in the idea that a man in drag is funnier and more self-deprecating than a woman in drag because women are less valued in society. 2. The classism in the language of “high brow” and “low brow” and how it creates a humor hierarchy that perpetuates class stereotypes about intelligence and arrogance. But American Studies Jesse is going back into her angry-at-society box now, away from this discussion).

What Kate Fox does not address, is why the “importance of not being earnest” specifically manifests itself in the form of men in dresses and stockings. Sexism and classism are not exclusive to England, and they’re too easy an answer. One of my theories has to do with Liz’s favorite topic, Shakespeare. Shakespeare seems to be a huge point of national pride for the English, and his plays contained a lot of cross dressing for comedic purposes, plot purposes (i.e. The Twelfth Night), and for the practical purpose that only men used to act so they would have to play women’s parts. Maybe the influence of Shakespeare has seeped its way into modern theater in the form of cross dressing. I definitely think at least Leyshon felt some pressure to write some Shakespearean humor into Bedlam since it was performed at the Globe.

My other theory has to do with the absolute silliness of the men’s outfits that we saw in National Portrait Gallery. We look upon the tights, lacy and velvety frills and fabrics, codpieces, and otherwise ridiculous jewelry of the upper class men from the Tudor and Stewart line with the same out of context amusement that we see in the stupid haircuts of cool kids in our parents undoubtedly see in skinny jean leggings. Maybe the history men’s fashion, some of which is totally effeminate by today’s standards, has affected theater. Every time an English person see a man in a dress and suspenders maybe it hearkens back to the old days of the monarchy and the glory of the empire. (Fun fact: Vicky taught me yesterday that in England, suspenders are those little clasps that women use to hold their stockings up rather than straps that old people and people that enjoy ska music use to hold up their pants).

For more information on cross-dressing in theater, here is an article from the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2007/sep/07/whatilikeaboutcrossdressin

I welcome any other ideas.

P.S. Mom, England is very fun and educational and full non drag queen related learning experiences.

Image from http://www.reelmovienews.com/gallery/gandalf-glows/ and also from the audience of “The Habit of Art”

In our short time in London, I have gotten the opportunity to see a large sampling of what London’s theatres have to offer. From standing in Globe Theatre to watch “The Merry Wives of Windsor” (or, shudder, “Bedlam”) to leaning right over the actors of “All my Sons” from a box seat, I must say I have been quite impressed. The low cost of London’s theatres is particularly amazing. I have yet to pay more than fifteen pounds for a ticket, including seeing two shows on the West End. Given my love of ranking things, I am going to discuss each show from my least to most favorite. After that, I will briefly discuss my observations concerning the differences between American and British theatre.

Worst: “Bedlam”

Wow. Truly, astonishingly, bad. To begin with, I find the Globe to be sort of a touristy gimmick. When inside the theatre, I feel less like I’m in the era of Shakespeare and more like I’m at the Renaissance Fair in Pennsylvania. This being said, a good production, like “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” can still happen in a sub-par venue. However, a good production Bedlam is not. The actors seemed talented enough, but they clearly not invested in the show. No one was having a particularly good time on stage, and no one took their performance to the next level. Quite frankly I do not know if this would have been possible, as the script was terrible. You know something is bad when the entire audience groans at the climax of the play (On a side note, the audience seemed noticeably less touristy than the crowd at “Merry Wives of Windsor,” likely due to unfamiliarity of the show)

5: “Merry Wives of Windsor”

Now the quality of shows jumps up exponentially. “Merry Wives” is a sub-par Shakespeare comedy, but it was performed with enough conviction to make it quite an entertaining evening. The plot is quite convoluted, and the running length is far too great, but it was fun. I must ask, though: Why does the Globe insist on musical numbers between scenes? Are they trying to REALLY make it feel like the Renaissance Fair?

4: “The Habit of Art”

First of all, the National Theatre is an incredible venue. All three theatres were so meticulously thought out that there was not a bad seat anywhere. Unfortunately, “The Habit of Art” doesn’t belong on such a gargantuan stage as the one in the Lyttelton Theatre. I found the show to be a great two man drama hidden within a convoluted play-within-a-play series of gimmicks. While I appreciate Luke’s point in an earlier blog that the show at least tried to achieve greatness, and hit on a lot of themes in interesting ways, I still think that the show was far too flawed to be considered a success. The saving grace was that the audience was very receptive to the inside theatre jokes, as it seemed to be compromised of experienced theatre goers…and Sir Ian McKellen.

3: “The 39 Steps”

As Luke points out, and I think quite accurately, “The 39 Steps” excels at its rather un-lofty goals. The show is simply meant to be pleasant, and that’s what it delivers to a much more casual audience than the National Theatre. I still rank it above “The Habit of Art” because it appealed to a whole lot of my interests. As a huge Hitchcock fan, it was fun to see all of the clever references. I enjoyed all of the puns, clever staging, and impressive comedic acting. Yes, it was about as deep as a puddle, and it was not funniest show I had ever seen. However, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

2: “Les Miserables”

This is my favorite musical, and while it was not the best production of it I have ever seen, it was still solid. I wrote another blog about the only difference I saw between this and U.S. versions of the show. Other than that, it felt like a Broadway production in what might have been a slightly smaller theatre.

Best: “All My Sons”

The box seats might have helped. However, this show was incredibly powerful and moving. Once you got over a couple hiccups in the American accents, the acting in the show was impeccable, particularly by the lead actor David Sachet. The theatre itself was very similar to that of “Les Mis” and “39 Steps.” We were about twenty years younger than everyone else in the audience, but it did not matter in the least. Incredible writing, mesmerizing acting and solid directing made this the best show I’ve seen in London.

In comparing London theatre to that of America, and in particular New York, I am reminded of Rick Fisher’s analogy of Hollywood(Broadway) versus Independent Theatre(West End). I don’t think the comparison truly works. In terms of on-Broadway shows versus the West End shows, both are almost entirely comprised of very commercial, un-risky ventures. The West End has “Wicked,” “Chicago,” and “The Lion King” like Broadway, and adds to it stage versions of Thriller and Queen songs. Certainly, there are more avant-garde and quirkier productions around London in the National Theatre and elsewhere, but those are directly comparable to the quirky productions you might find off-Broadway. In terms of the shows themselves, I personally don’t think there’s huge difference between London and NY. For the past twenty years, it seems as if the two cities have simply been swapping shows. Broadway will get “Les Mis” and “Billy Elliot” from the West End, and in exchange London will get “Wicked” and “Jersey Boys.” The difference is in the audience. Because tickets are so much cheaper in London, the shows are blessed with a much more theatre-literate audience. It raises the energy of the production and, from my experience, makes for a better show. In conclusion, cheap theatre tickets are awesome.