Tearing through the English countryside after midnight in a chartered coach, watching plans for a weekend recluse to Scotland dissolve in front of your face – exhausting. Yesterday was a long day, a tedious day, but a good day, one that started early after a restless night and went to Stratford-upon-Avon (the 'upon Avon' part literally means it's on the River Avon), a town in Warwickshire that could almost have passed for a typical English hamlet, if it didn’t also happen that Anne Hathaway (1555-1623; not the Princess Diaries chick) had been born there.
Oh yeah, and her husband too.
This dude
Stratford is basically Shakespeare-central – think about any piece of crap that you have in your house. Anything. Got it? Ok, put the Bard’s face on it, and up its going rate to a ludicrous price. Welcome to Stratford.
To be fair, I saw this at the MUN bookstore before leaving.
But I feel you could buy this in Stratford too.
Indecently though, it is a cool town, with a cobblestoned, quaint feel to it, and we did a good job avoiding the tourist traps; in lieu of Shakespeare’s birth home (and, let’s be honest . . . if I hadn’t been there in grade 12 and stood in the room where Shakespeare was born, I totally would have shelled out £8 to go there this time), we went to a magic shop. Instead of the Shakespeare gift shop, we got fish and chips and hung out in a park, walking along the most boring mini-golf course in the United Kingdom. George’s mini-golf course in Steady Brook (as it stands TODAY) is far superior.
We went to two shows in Stratford, at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (home to the Royal Shakespeare Company), a huge brick building that’s surprisingly faceless on the outside, but has a cool amphitheatre feel to it on the inside. First show was the matinee of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and here’s the deal: it took Shakespeare’s script, but it used contemporary, Tim Burton-esque set and costume design. Lunacy overacted, and the point got muddled more than once as it took itself too seriously, and the ending dragged on. But I still liked some major parts of it (Hermia and Lysander seemed like real people, and the confrontation between the four lovers played out well, at least until they started screaming and having a pillow fight), and the overhead view we had from the dress circle was a real different perspective. At the end of it all though, Mary Walsh excused herself to go hang herself after sitting through the last 3 hours. Shat.
After a supper break, we went back to the RSC, to a different theatre with a similar setup. This show was The Homecoming, a two-act piece from the ’60s that was a completely different kind of show. The cast was widdled down to six, and it focused on domestic abuse, sexuality, and general human brutality. An expat returns to his dysfunctional home after spending some time in the States with his new wife, who ends up making out with both his brothers right in front of him, and purportedly stays behind to take up a whore’s life. A couple of the dudes also die, and the ending is all symbolism. It left a whole lot of questions, so we voted to hang around for the case panel discussion afterwards.
Let’s put this in perspective though. It was 10 o’clock at this point, and we told our bus driver we’d be there by quarter to. The discussion took about half an hour. D. Nichol was stressing, checking his watch; Mary Walsh wanted to stay. It was kind of like watching your parents disagree about something, where you’re afraid to take sides and end up feeling generally awkward; Don’s point made the most sense, since it was a two hour drive back to Harlow and we were all way tired (not to mention the bus driver was just waiting), but on the other hand, how could Mary Walsh lose this argument? Turns out she couldn’t; D. Nichol brought the bus back (after some hijinks), and we got some clarity but a couple more questions from the panel discussion. We ended up back in Harlow after midnight, too tired to think about finalizing any plans to Scotland, especially since some last minute issues came up. Oh well, looks like that will have to be next weekend, which is actually a bit better, since there will be more people, and more of a chance to get some solid plans.
Right now, it’s a sunny afternoon, and I’m taking the train to London soon. Looks like there’s a sweet coach tour to Salisbury, Stonehenge, and Bath on Sunday, which is a definite maybe – I guess that means tomorrow I should actually buckle down and do some homework.
Unless there’s something better happening in the UK . . .
Cheers,
rb
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