West of Cape Spear

Lay down your sweet and weary head

Night is falling, you have come to journey’s end

Sleep now, and dream of the ones who came before

They are calling from across a distant shore

Why do you weep? What are these tears upon your face?

Soon you will see, all of your fears will pass away

Safe in my arms

You’re only sleeping

What can you see on the horizon?

Why do the white gulls call?

Across the sea a pale moon rises

The ships have come to carry you home

And all will turn to silver glass

A light on the water, grey ships pass

Into the west.

Three months. Twelve weeks. Eighty-four days. Eighteen Canadians with eighteen different reasons for running away. Four countries. Five flights. Six hostels and hotels. More train trips, pints of cider, and cups of tea than I can count. One amazing experience.

Air Canada flight 861 leaves this morning out of Heathrow, flying into Halifax. We should be in St. John’s around supper time, where the first thing I’m doing is getting a Tim Horton’s coffee, a Big Mary, and a box of Voortman’s Holiday Cookies. From there, it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump away to the west coast of Newfoundland. To Pasadena. To 9 4th avenue. The first room on the left. To my own pillow.

How long is it going to take, though, to get my head out of this place? In “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33,” Kris Kristofferson wonders if the goin’ up was worth the comin’ down – it is, I’m sure, but it doesn’t end with the descent to St. John’s International Airport. How can it? What’s been seen can’t be unseen, definitely not forgotten.

To everyone back home who put up with me over the last three months, as I went chasing after some wild dream and ended up finding something altogether unexpected: tapadh leat. Tack så mycket. Moltes gracies. Merci beaucoup.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

To the seventeen other people who I’ve been living with all this time, the group that was comfortable enough to have a family supper together on the first Sunday in Harlow, what do you say? It could be one of those times where it’s best to just leave it as it. Wherever you do end up – and by the sounds of it, that’s a little bit of everywhere – just keep calm and carry on. And mind the gap. I’m sure whatever happens, it’s going to be freakin’ awesome, because you all are.

It’s kinda like the way Wicked ends:

Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?

(I do believe I have been changed for the better)

And because I knew you, I have been changed for good.

See you all soon, once I’m back west of Cape Spear.

Cheers,

rb

I Have Learned . . .

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

                                                                                                  – Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

The point of going to school is to learn something. With the semester in Harlow nearly finished, it’s time to account for what I’ve learned, and whether it was worth it or not. Consider this my cheat sheet.

• Fabric conditioner isn’t the same as liquid detergent. That doesn’t mean they come right out and print that on the bottle or anything.

• I can live without a BlackBerry attached to my hip.

• If you go to Stockholm and you buy a ticket to the underground rail network, then you’re a tourist.

• If you order an appetizer as a meal, you’re going to be sorely disappointed when it shows up. Don’t be cheap on an empty stomach.

• They really do drive on the left in the United Kingdom. Three months later, it still freaks me out if there’s a child or a dog sitting in the left-hand front seat.

• You can have a fantastic time in Europe without drinking like a fish.

• You can have a way better time in Europe by drinking like a fish.

• Tip in Spain. Always.

• Mountains that look like they’re real close probably aren’t. Try anyway.

• Fringe shows are way better than shows on the West End.

• Apparently I’m a hipster (see above).

• You can drink the water in train bathrooms . . . but you probably shouldn’t.

• On roundabouts, buses have to go right before they come left. Don’t worry, they won’t leave you.

• Ryanair really is that cheap. Just check in online before you go and keep it in one bag.

• Plans are awesome, but the things that you don’t count on are way better.

• If you can pay to go to a restored castle or climb a mountain, one will take your money away, the other your breath.

• Travel is one part looking for something, another part running away from something. In the end, it’s what you make it.

• There’s not much better than standing barefoot on a beach, watching the sun set over the Mediterranean.

• There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, more important than laughing.

• My teacher, Mary Walsh, got the police called on her during midterm break for ambushing the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford. Do what you believe in, and the hell with the rest. Seriously.

• If you bring a girl to the top of the Eiffel Tower, kiss her. If you're lucky, that's an experience to share together for a long time.

• The world is much bigger than St. John’s, than Newfoundland, than Canada. Let your reaches and your ambitions take you farther than your hometown, but as soon as your ego thinks about doing the same, you need to call in the reins. When you go home again, you’ll be glad you did.

• What's been seen cannot be unseen; what’s been said cannot be unsaid.

• Take pictures so that you can relive a moment, not experience it for the first time on a computer screen. 

• Always accept rides from strangers. Wait, that doesn’t sound right . . .

• You can totally have a once-in-a-lifetime experience like James Blunt in “You’re Beautiful.” That doesn’t mean that his song isn’t terrible.

• If a Spanish dude tries to find some common ground and asks if you know French, don’t say oui if you really don’t. Especially if you’re in a train cabin with him for 11 hours.

• It’s not about Life of Johnson, it’s about your own life. Live it while you can – you can wait for the train, but the train won’t wait for you.

• You can have the best haggis, rich reindeer, a steaming bowl of paella, or fish and chips at every corner pub in London, but it’ll never be as good as Mom’s homemade lasagna.

• I’m a lucky, undeserving bastard.

I think that about accounts for it. Completely, utterly worth it – and maybe, just maybe, I’ll actually remember some of this stuff, once the final exam is finished. See you soon.

Cheers,

rb

A Harlow Family Christmas

This whole thing started with packing and uncertainty and it ends tomorrow with packing again. The uncertainty has changed, though – oh, it’s still there, don’t think for a second I’ve got anything significant figured out, but it’s hard to go through the last three months and not come out on the other side with a much clearer sense of self.

The last weekend in Harlow was fun. Simple, unadulterated fun – no pretensions of anything else but. After baking rows and rows of shortbread cookies, blueberry muffins, chocolate chip cookies, and molasses buns (and eating more than a few for supper) on Saturday night, it was time to head over to the Crown.

Not much changes inside that little pub, with most of the same people hanging around the bar at all times, but that’s not always a bad thing. Ever since the first weekend in September, when we took that 17-year-old Lucy’s advice to graffiti the wall in the Crown’s alleyway, we’ve had a bit of a connection to the spot – not to mention a geographic convenience. The bar was all adorned in Christmas lights, with a tree perched in the corner. It’s still November, but once you get in that mood, good luck coming out of it anytime soon.

After the Crown’s last call around midnight, we came back to the Maltings for a little while only, before we grabbed some cabs to the Harlow Town Centre. In the daytime, it’s a generic strip mall. At night, it’s a shady place where you’d be crazy to go alone, where police cars wait around every corner and dudes go as far as the threshold of a greasy all-night restaurant before they take a piss. It’s also the spot where Seen Nightclub is.

There’s something to be said about Seen, and none of it is very good, except maybe for the fact that they close at 4 am (except then you’re at Harlow Town Centre at 4 am). I’d never gone before, but early in September a small crowd of East Coast pioneers went to Seen and came back with all kinds of stories about the sleazy English nightclub. The weekend I was gone to Paris, even more people went.

Seen could have been a festering hole in the ground where the festering is actually coming from dead puppies, for all I cared – I just really, really wanted to go. So when we got there and the bouncers wouldn’t take our Canadian IDs – even though there were close to a dozen of us with the same kind of IDs – and then refused to let us talk to the manager, I was about ready to make a scene. Remember the cops that I said were waiting around every corner?

I went to the police to try to get into Seen.

Jaysus, I can’t even take that seriously, and I was there. Anyway, that didn’t work either, and I never got my Seen experience. Though they assured us, if we had our passports, we’d be able to get in – which is what I guess we should have assumed. Who doesn’t bring their most important piece of identification out with them when they go clubbing in the freakin’ Harlow Town Centre?

Anyway, the cops were kind enough to point us to another club, just further along the stretch of closed-down shops. TwentyOneBar is in cahoots with Seen, but they took our IDs (even though we assumed their name meant you had to be twenty-one, which we all most assuredly were not) and only charged us £2, compared to the £7 Seen was prepared to swindle off of us.

Going to TwentyOne was something like going to Konfusion the first time on George Street – oh dear God, get me out of here, these kids are in high school, and I’m pretty sure I need a shower before I do anything else, but I kind of needed to go there, exactly once. I went to the bathroom, and some dude was standing up along the sink, with rows of colognes. I looked for the soap dispenser and couldn’t find it, but then he whipped out a bottle and gave me a squirt. Oh, I thought, well this is a pretty nice dude.

Once I’d washed my hand, he even gave me a spray of cologne on my wrists. Wow, I thought, this is pretty cool. Screw you, Seen.

Then he pointed to the damn tip dish. Uh oh. Now, I’m not exactly uncultured, but my dealings with bathroom attendants is pretty limited. I reached into my pocket, grabbed a cornucopia of coins, and tried to put it in his hands.

“No,” says he, shaking his head. “Dig deeper.”

Umm . . . what? Abort, abort, I need to get out of here! I gave him a five pound note, mostly because I was imagining the headlines of the cheap Canadian who got shanked in Harlow, and he gave me back £2. I’m not sure why that guy charged me £3 to watch me pee and give me something that you can get by rubbing the cologne ads in Rolling Stone, but so be it.

We didn’t linger too long at the club, taking off for an after-hours pizza joint. My donair – called doners over here, what a country – took an extra half hour because they forgot about it, but that’s ok, since once upon a time, back before Harlow Town Centre repeatedly kicked us in the nuts, we had requested a return cab for 3:45. We ended up taking someone else’s, just the same.

After that, Sunday really was a day of rest.

Two classes yesterday, both of them all about endings. Mary’s morning satire class had us take the sketches that we’ve been working on for the past three months – written about everything from the Metrobus system to tourists to the perpetual Townie asshole Dougie Cringles – and come up with an ending. I still don’t know what she wants to do with our sketches, but seems to think that we could do some sort of performance in the future. I have my doubts that will happen once we all go our separate ways in St. John’s, but wouldn’t that be cool? We even gave a nod to Republic of Doyle, and she figured we could get Allan Hawco on board – and she is Mary Walsh, after all.

Don’s class was a class unlike anything ever. After two presentations – and Sher’s perfectly-timed homage to everything we’ve done at an Oscar Wilde dinner party was the perfect send-off – Don started flicking through pictures he’d taken throughout the trip, projected on the big screen from his computer, which also showed plenty of male enhancement email spam. Then, up comes a picture of the original Hell-Fire club, followed by the story of how he walked along the Thames to get the shot (the building is in private property), got stuck in the mud, and had to change in the woods. Next thing you know, he’s got a guitar out, singing a song he wrote about being so poor you have to resort to cannibalism.

Best. Class. Ever.

More cookie baking in the afternoon (we’re going to wear those ovens out before we leave, I swear), getting ready for our little Christmas party in the common room with our Secret Santa gift exchange. What looked like way too much food got devoured, we watched Muppet’s Family Christmas, and had one last full group shindig, interspersed with more laughing than I’ve done in a long time, and ending with a big group hug. How do you come back from this? I never got the residence mentality before, never understood how you can form such a bond with a building full of strangers, but when you’re with them all the time, and you get each other and respect each other, no matter how different you all might be, it’s impossible not to. 

I’m looking forward to getting back to Newfoundland, but damn it if I’m not going to miss this.

Lor acted as Santa for the gift exchange, and Devin gave a big show of giving me his present – a cheap, £3 bottle of Tesco cider, before giving me a Game of Thrones mug, while playing the theme song on his computer. Best. Gift. Ever. Plus, it had the Targaryen’s emblem on it, and Emilia Clarke is totally on my top five list.

 *Swoon*

Seriously, how do you come back from this?

This morning, we took off for one last trip to London, heading to the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square, to see the special Leonardo da Vinci exhibition, “Painter at the Court of Milan.” I don’t know a whole lot about art, but I do know that this is a big deal. The exhibit, spread out over 7 different gallery rooms, is the most comprehensive displays of da Vinci’s rare surviving paintings ever, and it’s been insured at 2 billion (with a “B”) dollars. People have said it’s never happened before, to have all these paintings together, and it probably never will again.

Tickets are extremely hard to come by, and even though ours only cost £14, they’re already being scalped for £250.

From 1482 to 1499, Leonardo da Vinci was the court painter for Milan’s ruler, Ludovico Sforza. Leo dabbled in just about everything in his day – art, science, mathematics – and was an undeniable genius; his stay in Milan was considered to be his most productive periods, and the incredibly unique and special display at the National Gallery is the accumulation of that time period. No “Mona Lisa,” but lots of other things to gawk at.

After hanging out one last time on top of the lion statues at Trafalgar Square, we headed into the gallery, where the rooms were way more cramped and claustrophobic than I would have thought, considering they only let so many people in every half hour. After a few rooms, I couldn’t get up close to his notebook sketches, because it simply took too long with the slow-moving lines – instead, I just focussed on his paintings. There were a lot of cool ones, too, like “The Belle Ferronnière,” depicting the fiery gaze of Beatrice d’Este (Sforza’s wife), the unfinished “Saint Jerome,” and two versions of “The Virgin of the Rocks,” painted about twenty years apart and demonstrating da Vinci’s shift from an idealization of nature to a reverence for the divine.

Rounding out the exhibit was a massive version of “The Last Supper,” on loan from the Royal Academy of Arts (I have no idea how they transported such a huge canvas, even just within London), that was painted by da Vinci’s assistant Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli around 1520 and was used during the restoration of the original, still painted on the wall of the refectory of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.

After we saw “The Last Supper” display, myself and Kayla got separated from the group, and tried to wander back to the main exhibit. We knew they wouldn’t readmit us, but figured we would meet some of our capadres there. We got lost along the way – although we did pass the 1533 Hans Holbein painting, “The Ambassadors,” which has been cited in so many literature classes because of the anamorphosis going on. Just look at the thing from a very sharp angle to see what I’m talking about:

At any rate, we got back to the exhibit, and couldn’t find anyone. Maybe they were at the main entrance? So, we backtracked.

As we were going up the stairs to the main lobby, I had to do a double take. “Kayla,” I said, and I could tell she caught the intensity in my voice, and the way I grabbed her arm. “Look . . . right . . . behind me.”

There were three people there, having a chat. “So?”

I shook my head. “Take a few steps back, right now.”

We went back to the top of the stairs and looked at the little group. “Is that . . . Paul McCartney?”

Sweet merciful Christ. Once we finished looking at the world’s most impressive collection of 15th-century Leonardo da Vinci paintings, Sir Paul McCartney had a private tour. I was literally about 4 feet away from him, and I eavesdropped on a conversation that Paul McCartney was having – it was about an old English teacher, indecently.

We had the camera out, but couldn’t do it – not in a museum, not while he was right in the middle of a conversation (and, let’s be honest . . . we’re from Newfoundland, where they hunt seals, and even if he didn’t turn us down, I’d still have a stupid Movember moustache in the picture), but I still got to have that moment of being in the proximity to a real live Beatle – ten years to the day that George Harrison passed away. Unbelievable.

Once we told our breathless story, a few other members of our group pretended to be looking for someone in the exhibit room and weaseled their way past security, locking eyes with Sir Paul and confirming our story. It was a pretty amazing way to end one final day in London – especially since Don was the last one to go in, convincing the guards he was in search of Mary, and came back as giddy as can be.

And now, here we are. Riding a three month wave of euphoria mingled with exhaustion, and somehow having to pack all of that away in a black suitcase that’s been sitting in the luggage room at the top of the stairs all this time. Come tomorrow, I’m going to have to start re-organizing everything, and getting set for a 6:30 am bus out of Harlow on Thursday.

I’m excited for that stage of the journey – unabashedly, even. Because December is an ending, but it’s also a whole other new beginning – and, if I play my cards right, it’s going to be the beginning of something great.

Cheers,

rb

Last Friday Night: Omigod You Guys!

The 11 o’clock train to Harlow, the second last one of the evening, was half-empty and all quiet on this front. Seems like a fitting way to end my last Friday night in London, with clear skies and a cool breeze waiting for me back at Harlow Mill – this time next week, I’ll be back in St. John’s, doing my best to keep warm in a city that just got hit by a record snowfall. Jaysus, absolutely unreal.

You can tell that everyone is getting run down now, though, and a few weeks of fireplaces and candies and booze are in order, to properly recharge. The other night, we tried watching The Lion King in the common room, and fell asleep while Mufasa was still alive. I don’t envy the half dozen of our crew who took off for Berlin this weekend – a few days in Harlow with no commitments sounds alright to me.

After a lazy Thursday, myself, Kayla, and Allie took a cab to Bishop’s Stortford in the evening, a community on the way to Stansted Airport, in Hertfordshire. We went to check out an acoustic open mic night at the Half Moon Pub, in a single room that felt like a cozy recital hall rather than an appendage to a pub – a pub that also happened to serve pints of a 7-point-something-percent cider at the usual £3. Most of the performers were about two and a half times as old as the b’ys that get up on stage at the Breezeway, and the audience was a whole lot different too – one guy at the table next to us was reading a novel throughout the sets.

Yesterday morning, the sun was shining, but it was one of those autumn-on-the-verge-of-winter kind of days. I’m guessing most of them are going to be like that now, until they’re full-fledged winter days. I took the 10:36 train out of Harlow Mill by myself, heading for a day dicking around London; most of the people left behind for the weekend used Friday to do some self-exploration of the city. I scribbled down a few things I wanted to see before heading back to Canada, and after picking up a day’s travelcard for the underground tubes, I set off, first for Bethnal Green, just east of Liverpool Street.

The V&A Museum in Brompton, which we visited a few weeks ago, has a separate branch dedicated to toys, games, figurines, and all sorts of other fun things, appropriately enough called the Museum of Childhood. The museum has been in operation since 1872, but it only became a specialist museum dedicated to childhood in 1974. That was my first stop: a huge open building, with tiered landings dedicated to different eras and types of toys, from 1970s-era Star Wars figurines, to windup creatures from the 18th century.

The front room had a weird little forest display, made by some local schoolchildren under the supervision of visual artists. The small creation had the misleadingly cool named of “The Stuff of Nightmares” and was made to represent the fairytale “Funevogel” by the Grimm Brothers, a foundling who gets in trouble with a witch in the forest.

Once inside, I could tell that the Museum of Childhood wasn’t exactly my scene: seven-year-olds were running around, screaming and pointing, while their exhausted parents sat and watched and said “That’s nice” every so often. On the other end of the spectrum, grey-haired codgers walked around, looking at Victorian dollhouses as if they remembered them from their childhood. Even though a lot of the displays were pretty cool – some working zoetropes (an early, circular moving picture device) and train sets and windup monkey musicians – how do you go up to a group of excited children and politely say, “Excuse me, I’m 22 and here by myself, but could you please move so I can have a look at the damn Lord of the Rings toys now?”

 You don't ask – you just push 'em out of the way

It was about lunchtime when I took off from the museum, and hitched a ride on the Metropolitan line to King’s Cross, where I poked around the British Library for a second time, flicking through the bookstore and re-visiting the Sir John Ritblat Gallery, complete with the Magna Carta and some original Beatles’ lyrics.

Come to think of it, I did a scatter bit of re-visiting old haunts yesterday. After the museum, I headed to Westminster, walking along the bridge by the base of Big Ben and the Parliament Buildings, before heading north to Camden Market, to do some shopping amongst the cramped stalls of oddities and knick-knacks. Lots of novelty t-shirts, Middle-Eastern incense and hookahs, clocks, records, food, and flashy fashion, shopkeepers all vying for the crowd’s attention as they meandered through the aisles like cattle – my “shopping” mostly turned to browsing, which was still a pretty decent way to spend a few hours.

Come 5 o’clock, I reconvened with Kayla and Adam at Covent Garden, where our plans to see The Lion King Musical were quickly dashed by a full house. Who’d have thought that one of the most popular West End musicals would sell out on a Friday night? Instead, after darting back to Soho and grabbing some noodles for supper, we decided to take in a totally different show: Legally Blonde: The Musical.

Remember the Reese Witherspoon movie from 2001 (holy shat, is it that old?) about the ditzy blonde chick, Elle Woods, who goes off to Harvard on the heels of her douchebag ex-boyfriend, and ends up lucking into a murder case where passing ‘Fashion and Hair Care 101’ saves the day? Er, umm . . . me neither. I was busy welding or barbequing or tuning up my hot rod or something. But I did hear something about it.

 Come to think of it, parts of it do stick out . . .

When we first saw the massive, glittery silver sign outside the Savoy Theatre a few months ago, I wondered if anything could be made into a West End musical. Legally Blonde: The Musical debuted on Broadway in 2007, and has been a staple on the West End since 2010. Turns out that it wasn’t just something tacked together to make a quick buck -- but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Before returning to Covent Garden, after some hemming and hawing, I decided I really wanted a £7 souvenir program from Wicked. I know, I know, I should have just got it the other week, when we actually went to see the musical, but there’s no time better than the present.

Well, not exactly, since going back to the Apollo Victoria Theatre was very nearly a disaster. The little boutique of souvenirs didn’t open until 6:30, which was about the time we left Piccadilly Circus. It wasn’t far at all: one stop to Green Park, a line change, and then another stop to Victoria. Should be no problem to get there and back again in an hour, right?

I’ve seen the tubes crowded before. More than once. But I don’t think I was ever in so much of a hurry as I was right then and there. The approaching trains were full to the brim, and the waiting platform was almost as crowded. I don’t mind the claustrophobia, but there was no guarantee you were even going to fit on the next train, nevermind the fact that the lines moving out of the station went at a snail’s pace, and it was only every so often that you saw an opening big enough to wiggle through and gain about 4 feet. It was 7 o’clock when Kayla and I found ourselves at Victoria station.

Panic is the best kind of muse. I flew out of the station as soon as the opportunity presented itself, made the quick jaunt to the Apollo theatre, now illuminated in green light, clambered up the stairs . . . and immediately got grabbed by an attendant, demanding a ticket.

“But I just want a program!” I said, breathless.

By this point, a line was forming behind me, I had lost Kayla, and the guy clearly thought I was trying (badly) to sneak in. I showed him the money in my hands, counted out on the train in an attempt to not be idle, as if this was proof of my story.

“Alright,” he said, “I’ll trust you.”

I was out again in about 30 seconds, thanked the dude, and hoped to God the glossy program was worth this gigantic kerfuffle. Once I found Kayla across the intersection, we ran every chance we had, dashing down the underground stairs, while attendants on loudspeakers calmly announced that the Bakerloo line was interrupted because someone had gotten under the train. Business as usual on the London Underground.

On the tube back to Covent Garden, a few stops past Piccadilly, most of the people were getting Biblically familiar with each other, just by sheer geometry. Cramming that many people in that kind of space was like a losing game of Tetris. The Covent Garden station is one of the few spots in Central London that is only accessible to the streets by a lift or a flight of stairs . . . and guess what? It was good and crowded, the lifts not even visible because of the crowd that had queued up in front of them. In hindsight, Leicester Square was only a quarter of a kilometre away, and would have been a much easier jumping-off point. Of course, in hindsight, we might have done a lot of things differently. Either way, we were there now, and could either wait in another agonizing line, or go up the emergency stairs. All 193 of them, the equivalent of a 10-storey building. Nice knowing you, legs.

The stairs were almost as crowded as the line for the lifts, but there were a few openings where we could make a quick, weaving dash. Once we made it out into the night, we had about 10 minutes to get to the theatre.

Now, which way was it again?

By the time we made it to the Savoy Theatre, we were both good and sweating and felt like action heroes, but found our seats in good enough time to let our pulses drop back below 300. By now, these Europeans must be getting used to seeing me running through their streets, with only a few minutes to get wherever I’m going, lest some disaster ensue. I know I’m getting used to it.

Now, Legally Blonde: The Musical.

It was a chick flick in every sense of the word, and watching it on a date only makes it a little bit less gay. That said, I don’t even care that much – it was a lot of fun, an unabashedly guilty pleasure that brought the plot of the movie into the modern day and purposely overdid everything. No thought or scrutiny was required – you could just sit back and smile. The songs were catchy, with more than a few clever moments where you couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Plus, they had trained dogs – how cool is that? I don’t think it was as significant or spectacular a show as Wicked, but it definitely had some great moments, and makes me wonder why I didn’t take in more grandiose musicals while in London.

Oh yeah, because the theatre is always popular in London, with 2000-seater venues selling out all across the city, even when tickets cost more than a hundred bucks a pop. We ended up in the very back of the stalls for Legally Blonde with a last-minute ticket, so getting the good seats is either a very lucky endeavour (as in the case for Wicked – and on a Saturday night, too) or a real expensive one.

Still, I’m content with what we managed to see and do. More than content – elated.

  

Hard to believe last night was our last Friday night in London. Tonight, we’ve been cordially invited (the last time I was cordially invited to something, it was to meet a princess at the Princess Pavilion at Disney Land . . . I’m approaching this thing with some suspicion) to a Canadian Christmas party at the Crown – before that, me and a special someone are getting some cornstarch and making shortbread cookies, my favourite (the last time I made these cookies, me and my roommate Craig burned the hell out of them, but ate every last one).

Remember that part at the end of The Lord of the Rings, when Sam feels torn in two between his old life and his new one? “You cannot always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be and to do. Your part in the story will go on.”

Easier said than done, sometimes, but it’s something that everyone has to deal with at some point. Just the same, that reconciliation can go on the back burner for the time being – I’m more concerned about the sugary smell coming from the oven right now.

Cheers,

rb

Reopening The Curtain

After a full semester of trampling across the English countryside to go to London, navigating the tubes to get to a different theatre from the night before (always 7 o’clock for the 7:30 performance, excepting matinees), some good some bad, last night was our final onstage show. The schedule for English 3713: British Drama in Performance will never again be so fresh as it is right this moment. Consider this a retrospective look back at Fall 2011.

September 14, The Criterion Theatre – The 39 Steps

A hilarious, four-person whodunit based on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 [more serious] film. What a completely ridiculous and awesome start to our program.

September 15, The Royal Shakespeare Theatre (Stratford-upon-Avon) – The Homecoming and A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Whimsical fairies and disgruntled families; Pinter and Shakespeare couldn’t be less alike, and their plays got some very different reviews.

September 20, The Royal Court Theatre – The Faith Machine

A new play that tackled love, philanthropy, religion, and politics. Great when it asked big questions, but faltered when it tried to answer them. Also featured Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) before turning to the Dark Side.

 

September 21, The Victoria Hall Theatre (Old Harlow) – Outside Edge

A small community play about a cricket team, and their dysfunctional lives off of the field. No groundbreaking drama or stellar performances, but an endearing change of scenery from the West End.

September 22, Canal Café Theatre – NewsRevue

A sweaty little club with some stripped-down, energetic, fast-paced comedy sketches. The world’s longest running live comedy show still felt like a well-kept secret – and that made it all the better.

September 26, The National Theatre – Grief

In Mike Leigh’s new play, not a lot happened, except the slow deterioration of a family, leading to a tragic ending. One of my favourites – still more than a bit chilling.

September 28, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre – Doctor Faustus

Christopher Marlowe’s classic play about a bored academic who sells his soul to the devil to have a hell of a time for a few years. Staged in the newly-restored, outdoor Globe Theatre, the show was true to the source, utilizing spectacle and enough self-awareness to have a lot of fun while addressing heavy things. Standing front row was easily one of the best theatre experiences this year.

September 29, Oxford Playhouse (Oxford) – The Wild Bride

Another story of selling your soul to the devil, except that the Kneehigh Theatre troupe delved more into the absurd, melding blues music and Tim Burton storytelling techniques to make a weirdly wonderful piece.

October 4, The National Theatre – Mike Leigh in Conversation and The Veil

The director took part in an interview that tried to be intimate in an auditorium of a few hundred people, not exactly hitting on any profound revelations but speaking a little bit on Grief. The Irish ghost story that followed, just down the hallway at the Lyttelton Theatre was even more lifeless . . . and not in the good way that ghost stories should be.

October 7, Trafalgar Studios – Top Girls

Caryl Churchill’s 1982 work featured three very different acts, revolving around the roles, responsibilities, and professional life of a career woman in an era of Margaret Thatcher. 

 October 6, Theatre Royal Haymarket – The Tempest

Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) took on the lead role of Prospero in Shakespeare’s surreal final play. The show was engaging enough for me, the spectacle of the fairies impressive enough, but the comedy felt stiff throughout.

October 11, The Bush Theatre – Sixty-Six Books

Half a dozen vignette performances – from a monologue to a full-band performance – focussing on the Biblical books Esther through to Isaiah, part of a full series tackling the whole thing, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the New King James Bible.

October 11, Ambassadors Theatre – Showstopper! The Improvised Musical

An improvised musical – “Sewercide” – like a very, very extended skit on Whose Line is it Anyway? Lots of fun, especially since one of the dudes in the show, Sean McCann, had been teaching our Satire class how to improvise. 

October 12, Southwark Playhouse – Bound

A real fringe show with no props other than a table and a hanging lightbulb, staged in a cozy cave. Pulling the audience into the lives of half a dozen Devon fishermen, it struck a powerful chord with all the Newfoundlanders in the audience. Incredible – Mary Walsh is trying to get the b’ys to take their show to the LSPU Hall, and she just might be the one to get that done.

October 13, Cambridge Arts Theatre (Cambridge) – The Madness of George III

18th century historical political comedy with a headcold (not metaphorically – I was sick). Not much more to say.

October 15, The O2 Arena – Katy Perry in Concert

Ok, not exactly part of the course syllabus, but definitely a show that indulged in theatrics and gave me a hummingbird heartbeat, even if my stuffy nose made me miss the Candy Cane smell-o-vision.

October 18, Greenwich Theatre – The Pit and the Pendulum

I really enjoy Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, because he deals with suspense expertly. Hearing the story backwards, told by two semi-competent actors, with a stupid twist thrown in (“Meeeeee, Sair? Well I don’t . . . Maaaaaaaybe I do!”) doesn’t have the same effect. Nice try.

October 19, Finborough Theatre – Mixed Marriage

What happens when a Catholic and a Protestant try to get married in early 20th-century Ireland? That’s not a joke, especially when the staunchly Protestant father of the lad is heavily involved in a factory strike, but rather the setup for something altogether brutal and compelling, especially considering the theatre only seats some 50 people, and we were sitting in the Rainey family’s kitchen.

October 20, The Rose Theatre – The Importance of Being Earnest

Sitting right up in the pit didn’t distract me too much from Oscar Wilde’s absurdly satirical romantic comedy. Lots of tomfoolery from start to finish – and a good transition to midterm break.  

 November 1, Cambridge Theatre – Matilda the Musical

Based on Roald Dahl’s classic story, this new, innovative musical was a fun night out, pulling some cool tricks along the way. Plus, the cast of primarily children put off a real professional, West End show.

November 2, Apollo Theatre – Jerusalem

Mark Rylance stars in Jez Butterworth’s 2009 play, a show that has been hailed as an instant modern classic. More than a few people told us that we’d be telling our grandchildren that we got to see Mark Rylance as Rooster Byron in the show’s original run, and they may be right – the show had a fantastic blend of humour, epic grandeur, English mythology, and tragedy.

November 3, Duchess Theatre – The Pitmen Painters

The true story of the Ashington Group, a bunch of miners-turned-painters in the 1930s, felt more like a lecture on art appreciation than a piece of theatre. Human interactions were sacrificed in favour of philosophical discussions on the value of art – which would actually be ok, if the show had said something I’d never heard before.

November 5, Apollo Victoria Theatre – Wicked

The untold story of the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum’s world of Oz is fun, sublime, tragic, and cathartic. Another step away from the course curriculum, but one of the most incredible, gorgeous, grandiose things I’ve ever seen on stage, defying gravity from start to finish.

November 7, Trafalgar Studios – 3 Days in May

A historical drama literally about 3 days in May during the Second World War when Winston Churchill and his War Cabinet considered bending the knee to Mussolini. Gripping story, lacklustre storytelling.

November 8, Theatre Royal Haymarket – The Lion in Winter

Another historical drama, except this one actually had heart. The play is nearly 50 years old, set in the 12th-century court of Henry II during Christmas, when he and his estranged wife are attempting to have a civilized holiday with their children, all of whom aspire to the throne after the king kicks the bucket.

November 9, Fortune Theatre – The Woman in Black

Daniel Radcliffe is starring in a new film adaptation of The Woman in Black, but nothing can be better or more terrifying than seeing her appear on an intimate West End stage. I’m still careful looking over my shoulder on dark nights – just in case.

November 14, The National Theatre – Juno and the Paycock

An Irish drama about . . . you know what? I couldn’t really understand half of what they were saying, and I cared even less about what I did hear. I saw enough good performances this fall to not feel guilty about this one. I’d rather watch the Pitmen Painters tell me the story of The Veil than sit through this one again.

November 16, Gielgud Theatre – Yes, Prime Minister

A comedy set in the PM’s office chambers, while he discusses foreign deals and the BBC. Not exactly the setup for anything particularly spectacular, except that it was so ridiculous, and the actors’ timing so perfect, it didn’t falter or get stale like some other political works this semester.

November 21, The New London Theatre – War Horse

A really weak story about a boy who enlists in the English army during WWI to find his horse, Joey, who’s been volunteered to the cavalry. Turns out the show was freakin’ spectacular all the same, because the horses (and the goose) were acted out with complicated, artistic puppetry.

November 22, The National Theatre – The Comedy of Errors

Mayhem ensues when two sets of twins, separated at birth, get loose in the city and mistaken for each other around every turn. I’ve seen a hundred movies and tv shows that use this trope, but seeing the Bard’s own work in a contemporary sphere made for a whole new experience.

*          *          *

By my count, that’s 30 shows, not including the few that I saw outside of the program. Who gets to spend 12 weeks in London, doing that? It was a tiring few months, with more than a few days where we actually shuddered to think that we had to go see another show, but looking back over the whole list, I have a lot of fantastic memories, and can hang on to highlights from every single performance (even if it’s just the ending of Juno which, believe me, was the highlight).

A good play should make you think, should make you feel, should give you an experience you wouldn’t have had otherwise. I just spent a full three months having those experiences, 30 different times.

What a lucky, undeserving bastard I am.

Cheers,

rb