Kidding, kidding. God, I love London, and getting back into the city this week has been a real treat. Tuesday, after writing an exam in the morning (just like riding a bike – still got it), we took the late afternoon train into good ol’ Liverpool Street. We had a decent spell of time to get to Cambridge Theatre, just off the West End intersection Seven Dials. The show we were seeing was one of the ones that everyone has been excited for since day one: Matilda the Musical.
You know the story of the neglected girl who ends up having telekinetic powers and, unlike Carrie, doesn’t destroy an entire town in Maine one prom night? You definitely do, assuming you were a kid in the ’90s. If you weren’t, I can’t blame you for your age, but you should also watch The Lion King, since you probably missed the boat on that one too.
And have Fun Dip, you deprived fool
Anyway, it’s a fantastic Roald Dahl story (who, by the way, not only travelled across Newfoundland in his youth, but hated it), not to mention a borderline terrifying movie with Danny DeVito (in a full out terrifying role), and in it Matilda uses her powers to stick up to injustices with some comedically awesome results.
Who didn't want this dude to get his comeuppances?
The musical was the first real musical I’ve seen, if you don’t count the shows that the elementary schools in Corner Brook used to put off at the Arts and Culture Centre. So, I didn’t have a whole lot of preconceptions. The stage itself was empty, but all around the periphery was ornamented with huge scrabble tiles. Once the show started, it was obvious that this was the most coordinated show we’ve seen, every intertwining dance move and musical note calculated and well rehearsed.
The Royal Shakespeare Company started the show up at the Courtyard Theatre, before moving to Covent Garden this season. The show took its cues from the book and movie, but downplayed the magic part of it. Where Matilda stood out was in the quality performance the kids gave. Most of the cast looked like they were ten years old, but they got the lines and the dance moves down pat. The part of Lavendar, Matilda’s bestie, was funnier and more genuine than some of the adults. Not better than Miss Trunchbull, the terrifying army sergeant of a headmistress, though; the dude who played her (you read that right) wasn’t as intimidating as he could have been, but he didn’t overact and actually made the antagonist likeable and laughable.
That, and the stage work was really freaking cool. One song cleverly went through the alphabet and had characters climbing lettered blocks that appeared when they sang them. Meanwhile, the scene where Amanda Thripp gets swung and thrown by her pigtails had some cool techniques, including shoulder straps, flashing lights, and a dummy thrown from the ceiling into the waiting arms of her classmates. The look and the atmosphere – not taking itself too seriously, starring kids because the show’s for kids (that didn’t mean we couldn’t love it – plus the 50 year old guy alone next to us had a riot) – more than made up for the fact that none of the songs were that incredible, or that it got real (uncomfortably) dark real fast, and for some reason brought in the Russian mafia.
Fun times all around.
Yesterday was a long day in London. We went in at the ungodly hour of 8:30, rushing to get to the West End before 10. I thought D. Nix was going to have an aneurism, or at least a mild coronary, especially when Harry left his Visa at the train station and the group got severed for a few tube stops. He kept his cool though, and led us to the Garrick Club.
David Garrick (1717-1779) is considered to be one of the most important English actors since, well, ever. He made Shakespeare a thing again, when Shakespeare wasn’t a big deal – plus he did other stuff as well. When the Garrick Club was founded as a private Gentlemen’s club (sorry, ladies, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. I can only assume that all the b’ys did, under the pretence of theatre business, as smoke cigars, drink brandy, and be real sexist) in 1831 at Drury Lane, Garrick was good and dead, but his namesake and celebrity inspired the place.
We got a guided tour, a pretty rare thing for an outside group, because our sweating-bullets fearless leader has his PhD supervisor as one of the current members. Talk about exclusive; there were even girls allowed. The trip around the sprawling building was a look back at theatre history, especially considering the huge collection of memorabilia (Byron’s couch? A signed document by Charles Dickens? A photo from when John Wayne did a scene there in 1975’s Brannigan?) and portraits of actors. Pretty cool, swank spot; walking around it with a shirt and tie and made me feel like a big shot in London. Which is actually more uncomfortable than you might think.
After that, we had the afternoon to kill, and the parents led us kids separate. A few of us went to the Irish chain pub O’Neill’s, not far from the Garrick Club, and had a chicken crockpot (with a creamy mushroom sauce – freakin’ wicked) before hopping on the tube with our ridiculously overpriced peak time ticket. We jumped off at Hyde Park Corner, where roaming through the trails in autumn was basically like strolling into any generic romantic comedy. We picked up the route at Green Park, another of the royal parks in London, and headed down towards Buckingham Palace. You know, the spot where the Queen hangs out from time to time.
No change of the guards today, but they were out in full pomp, standing guard. What a load of bullcrap that is; judging by the tourists lined up at the gilded gates, taking picture after picture, I get why they’ve kept it up. English souvenirs don’t sell themselves, people. What was particularly cool was that the gate that led us there through the park was Canada Gate, right next to the Canada Memorial for the Canadian Forces killed during the World Wars. The actual gateway we took, though, was adorned with our coat of arms – and I’m talking Newfoundland here.
Traced our way back to Piccadilly by keeping the London Eye in front of us, eventually crossing the plaza of the Horse Guards Parade and emerging in the heart of metropolitan London. Trafalgar Square was only a short hop from here, and I branched off to check out the National Gallery, something I’ve neglected up until this point.
I’m not a huge art guy. Earlier posts can testify to that, but I did want to at least skim through the National Gallery, a huge (and free) art gallery on the edge of Trafalgar Square that happens to be the second-most visited museum in the UK, after the British Museum. The spot is nearly 100 years old, and has a collection of some 2,300 works, from the 1200s right up to the 1900s. Pretty intimidating, especially since you have to walk through an airport scanner before you can peruse.
I only spent about 45 minutes there, figuring out that medieval painters liked Jesus, mortality, and landscapes a whole lot. With a bit of time left before the evening show, I wandered to Piccadilly, up through China Town and Soho. In Soho, sex shops are pretty much the going thing, some like a very, very tame red-light district. Or maybe just calling it liberal is the safest thing. Anyway, lots of flashing, neon lights, in the whole neighbourhood.
Piccadilly is the heart of West End theatre, and at night it comes to life. Bedazzled billboards everywhere – in my mind, Broadway is something like this (not to be confused with Broadway in Corner Brook; when Jack and Jill’s shut down, the last resemblance to London’s West End went too). We went to the Apollo Theatre, to see Jerusalem.
Let me set this show up for you. The script is by a guy named Jez Butterworth, who sounds like a Dickens character, and was first performed in 2009. Since then, Mark Rylance, who played the lead role of Johnny “Roster” Byron from the beginning, won a Tony Award, and has been hailed as the ultimate English actor of this generation. Jerusalem itself is considered, by some, to be the greatest contemporary piece of drama on the go. Expectations were pretty high going into this thing, especially since every stranger you meet on the street recommends it.
Let me set this show up for you. The script is by a guy named Jez Butterworth, who sounds like a Dickens character, and was first performed in 2009. Since then, Mark Rylance, who played the lead role of Johnny “Roster” Byron from the beginning, won a Tony Award, and has been hailed as the ultimate English actor of this generation. Jerusalem itself is considered, by some, to be the greatest contemporary piece of drama on the go. Expectations were pretty high going into this thing, especially since every stranger you meet on the street recommends it.
And it delivered. Holy shite, what a show. It was long, but not arduous. Funny, hilarious even at parts, but dark and sombre at its core. If the Adam Sandler movie Funny People was a dramedy that was hit or miss, here is one that worked. The hero is really an anti-hero, a drug dealing lowlife who starts out as a joke, and goes into something inarguably sad, pathetic, and dangerously human. Everyone knows a Rooster Byron, even if no one ever wants to be him. It’s scary as hell, and absolutely devastating to watch, maybe because Mark Rylance is so good as what he does. The rest of the cast pulled it together too (especially Mackenzie Cook as the sidekick Ginger – Cook was Garth Kennan in the UK version of The Office, and Dwight Schrute became his US counterpart).
Who would win in a fight?
It’s strange – any time I’ve done drama in the past, I’ve studied the play and then seen it. After Jerusalem, I bought the script, and flicking through it I can already imagine how by simply reading it, you miss out on so many of the subtleties of the stage.
Anyway, the critics are right. If you happen to wind up in London and can only see one show, make it Jerusalem. I say that now because I’m finally (knock on wood) seeing Wicked this weekend, so that weighted claim might only last for a few days.
We’ve got another London day ahead of us (Jaysus, not that place again), made even better by the fact that Starbucks is starting to sell their Candy Cane Hot Chocolate today. Hopefully we can put off the snow for a little bit longer, just the same.
Cheers,
rb
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