Sands UK Tour, Day Five: London

Ten years ago this month, the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Charity (SANDS UK) sent my solo performance I Hate This (a play without the baby) on a seven date tour of Great Britain.

Tuesday, 12 June 2007

We were up last night until about 1 am. There so many reasons not to take a run today, but one too few, apparently.

My route took me down Euston to Regent's Park, down to and around the London Zoo and back. It was lovely and I was in no hurry. I have gotten a bit out of shape, however, and was a little hot and weary.

City running is very odd. But there are an awful lot of runners in central London. I stepped out of my hotel in time to catch a man and a woman going my direction, which was helpful, as I followed their lead down the city street, watching where they looked, and where on the pavement they kept their path. Not that there's much of a science to it, we're all salmon swimming upstream, dodging cars, people and other obstacles until we reach THE PARK. Returning, after seven on a Tuesday, I was like those folks yesterday in St. James, saying "excuse me" and trying not to get struck by a street sweeper.

Last night the children were left in the care of the in-laws so that our stage manager the wife, and I could steal off and see The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare's Globe. I have only seen one other performance there, the "Fancy Dress Party Macbeth" which remains the best production of the Scottish Play I've ever seen.

For this production of Merchant, instead of rationalizing that WS was some kind of forward thinking egalitarian (he wasn't) they chose the other route, which was to make almost everyone else grotesque, too. Shylock is an evil, hunched, bearded, withered old Jew, played by John McEnery, the guy who played Mercutio in Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet the year I was born. The Duke of Morocco was a grinning, strutting, stuffed-codpiece jutting cartoon of an African, the Spaniard an English-mangling braggart, and they even managed to squeeze in a joke at the French where one doesn't exist.

As for the English, Christian characters, the masquing scene featured what could be construed as a Black Mass, though really it was more like a bunch of frat boys dressed as priests and bishops and popes in devils' masks, performing an obscene marriage. They profess Christianity, but flagrantly ridicule its leaders.

They mock the trappings of Christianity - Catholicism, to be precise - but hypocritically espouse a pure love for Christ. One of the funniest moments in the play is when Antonio insists Shylock must be made to convert. To Antonio it isn't a punishment (it wouldn't have been to Shakespeare, nor his audience) but a blessing. However, the look on Shylock's face can't be described. It was hilarious. And that's offensive. And I laughed really loud and I don't feel bad about that.

The one stereotype that remained unsatirised was that of the homosexual Antonio, and his affection for Bassanio. In a play with such obvious mockery, for everyone, that minority alone was treated with subtlety and respect. And that's a double-standard. I found this omission confusing.

I am not suggesting they should have had a mincing Antonio. But if the Duke of Morocco is made to look and behave like a cartoon Muhammad Ali, Antonio seemed like he was in a different production.

Big ups to Kristy Besterman and Pippa Nixon, who had to step up from (respectively) the roles of Nerissa and Jessica to the roles of Portia and Nerissa (with Ms. Nixon doubling in her usual role of Jessica) with book in hand to cover for the woman usually playing Portia. The book-in-hand thing was distracting for about two seconds as Ms. Besterman did know and awful lot of the part and was very good in the role.

God bless the understudies, without them we'd all have to go home.

Original blog posts
I Hate This Blog, June 12, 2007
Daddy Runs Fast, June 12, 2007

Sands UK Tour, Day Four: London

Ten years ago this month, the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Charity (SANDS UK) sent my solo performance I Hate This (a play without the baby) on a seven date tour of Great Britain.

Monday, 11 June 2007

The London Eye

It was a long day yesterday, taking the train from Carlisle to London. We were taking a first class coach, and lucky me, I got the odd single seat a few rows up from everyone else. I read and dozed on and off for four hours. They do have an awful lot of sheep here.

The sheer excitement of being on a train eventually wore off for the kids, and the girl simply could not get comfortable or get to sleep. Hideous breakdown in King's Cross.

The wife, as ever, finds the best places to eat. We took a great early evening walk through Bloomsbury to Abeno, a Japanese place that specializes in egg pancakes called okonomiyaki, which they cook in front of you on the table. Big metal hot plates in front of my kids make me very, very nervous. So I drank a lot of sake.

This morning we led my sister- and mother-in-law on "the basics" tour of London. Yes, there was a ride on a double-decker bus, and a trip around the Eye.

That's my third go-round on the London Eye. I almost pulled a Dad and told the wife they could go, and I'd stick my nose in Foyles for a half-hour, but I didn't. There will be no fourth trip on the London Eye for me, even if someone puts a gun to my head.

A walk past Buckingham to St. James Park, where we got sandwiches and camped by the river where my wife can make those noises she makes when she sees water fowl. The kids got very excited by chasing pigeons, but I didn't think they'd catch one.

St. James Park

Our contact from SANDS met us back at the hotel before three to walk our stage manager and I to the Royal College of Physicians so we could tech the show. The auditorium we will be using is quite big, and they hope it may be two-thirds full. The acoustics are super, but the lights aren't really made for performance, it will be a number overlapping spots. The screen is possibly the biggest I've worked with and that's saying a lot.

I was surprised to hear there wouldn't be a rocking chair. Someone decided we didn't need one, that I could just use an office chair with a sheet thrown over it.

Hmn. Have you seen the show?

I insisted that we need the rocking chair. Any rocking chair, but a real one, one that rocks.

It's a simple show. I don't ask for much. Except the rocking chair.

Original blog post: June 11, 2007

The Great Globe Itself: Two Holes and a Plaque

Shakespeare might have been born in Stratford, died in Stratford ... but he really lived here in London. - tour guide, 1990

Twenty-four years ago as a young student taking a holiday university tour to England, on a rainy December morning, I witnessed a most unimpressive sight. A sooty plaque on the wall of a post-war factory building, indicating that the Globe Theatre, the very stage for which William Shakespeare had written his plays, was at one point in history around here, somewhere.

At that moment in time, there was also located nearby two large holes in the ground. Pits, really. One was the excavation site of the Globe's smaller competitor, the foundation of the recently-unearthed Rose Theatre.

And perhaps more significantly, another short walk down the south bank of the Thames, was a great muddy, vacant mouth, the groundwork for the as-yet unbuilt Shakespeare's Globe. Whether it ever would be built was even then uncertain. There were many at that time who found such a building project elitist and in fact entirely unnecessary.

Regardless, what they found at the Rose was auspiciously timed to excited the imagination about this new Globe, and also to provide valuable data on original construction. And if there is thing I hope to show in my new work The Great Globe Itself is the trajectory from Cleveland to that plaque to that sloppy hole in the ground.