Another beautiful week in London, and we actually got to go into the West End on Saturday for a wonderful lunch with our newly-found cousins, Martin and Cathy Hurst. Before leaving home, Maria sent an e-mail out to a second-cousin of Wally's letting him know we would be in London and like to meet him. Martin and his wife Cathy met us for a wonderful lunch a "Rules". For anyone who has not eaten there, "OMG". We had a reservation for 1:15, got there around 1:00 and stayed until 5:45. First of all "Rules" is the ultimate in English fare. Meeting cousins and bonding with them for several hours intensified the enjoyment. http://www.rules.co.uk/ is the website: visit it and you will be amazed at the menu, especially the wild game, most of which is raised and bred on Rule's own wildlife preserve.
At Wally's urging -- he is studying Shakespeare, after all -- we then went and got "house seats" for The Tempest, starring Ralph Fiennes, at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, just down from Picadilly Circus. This recently refurbished theatre has a grand and glorious history and has hosted performers such as Ellen Terry, John Gielgud, and most recently Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in a production of Waiting For Godot last year. We seated ourselves in the seventh-row center seats -- one of the advantages of being a producer is that you really can get terrific seats to shows anywhere (paying full price, of course!) -- and prepared to see a great production of Shakespeare's last play, his "farewell to theatre", as it has been described.
We were somewhat disappinted, then, when we saw a bunch of terrifc actors in a not-so-great production. The set was fine, actually it was the old Godot set (confirmed by the staff), and the lighting was well-done, but the "special effects" were not that special, some of the costumes were not very good, and the music was bad, bordering on awful. (There is a music composer listed, but not a music director.) Very surprising, especially from Trevor Nunn, the director of Les Mis, Cats, and a dozen other towering and succesful musicals.
Even the star, Ralph Fiennes (The English Patient, the Harry Potter films), seemed to be off his game last Saturday night. Some of his longer speeches actually took on a "sing-song" delivery at times, and at other times, he grabbed his head like a crazy man trying to stop the really loud voices shouting inside it. The flying was okay, but not really special: the actors playing Ariel went side-to-side and up and down only, no big movements at all, all slow; not very exciting, especially for a spirit who runs a lot on stage when he is not flying. While the costumes for the shipwrecked royalty and Miranda were fine, (except for their white-soled slip-on deck shoes for the mariners) Caliban wasn't much of a monster with a half-turtle shell on his left shoulder and a glove extending two fingers of his left hand. And poor Prospero, when he is "restored to his dukedom" near the end, puts on what is obviously a woman's dress with at least two dozen buttons up the front -- that he never does get buttoned very far -- and blue velvet bedroom slippers from the modern era. I guess we were disappointed that the production values were not as good as that cast. Trinculo, Miranda, and all the royals were very, very good, and the comedy in the play was done to perfection, well-timed and easy to watch. The music was off-key and shrill and the flying was lackluster, so the "ethereal" scenes were a complete dud for us.
We do better flying at Lakeland than they did, and we actually have a music director when we sing, too. Needless to say, we were dispappointed that the tech didn't match the actors' talents on stage Saturday night. We are really looking forward to seeing mark Rylance in Jerusalem soon, though! Thanks for reading!
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