One August night, Kristie took me to see a quaint little production of Aida, which (I secretly admit) was absolutely enthralling! Since that experience, I've been extremely interested in broadening my horizons, and seeing as many shows as I can. Last semester, not too many of my friends were actually interested in seeing shows, but since I've been hanging out with my new friend Carlos Estevez, the past few months have resulted in an exponential increase in shows! Since coming to London, I've had the chance to see...
- The Lion King 8/30/11
- Blood Brothers 9/21/11
- Wicked 12/19/11
- Les Miserables 2/10/12
- Absent Friends 2/16/12
- In Basildon 2/29/12
- A Midsummer Night's Dream 3/6/12
NYU in London offers a lot of the tickets at discount prices, so what would normally cost upwards of $250, has only ran me about $60 :) So, for the past four weeks, I've managed to go out and see a different show each week! It may be attributed to the fact that I don't know much about theater (or as the English call it, 'theatre'), but I tend to not discriminate between which shows that I attend, so we've seen shows that include comedies, tragedies, dark humor, musical theater, and tonight--something different altogether.
Originally, we were set to see one of the great Shakespearean plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream.
I was extremely excited to see a professional production of a Shakespearean play, but was sorely disappointed. Right from the start, the show was unorthodox, with an individual sharing jokes about the production, literally referencing the poor quality of the production itself. Shortly thereafter, he announced that because of the absence of Ian McKellen (you'll know him as Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings), the show was to be cancelled, and that refunds would be given. Apparently, this was supposed to be part of the show, and was to provide humor...I wasn't particularly amused.
As the play went on, the single-stage set was that of a band on half of the stage, and a cracked bathroom shower on the other half. The actors were dressed in modern, everyday clothes, and they recalled the few lines of Shakespeare that were actually incorporated in the show with such disdain that the great playwright himself would likely have fainted from disbelief.
The actual storyline of A Midsummer Night's Dream only consisted of about 30-35% of the performance, with the rest of it filled with people jumping through paper walls, performing lewd sexual acts on each other, spraying each other with blue dye, and nonsensical dialogue between what appeared to be the actors and the stagecrew. At one point, all of the actors on stage proceed to throw bread and flour at each other, stopping at times to throw these same objects at the audience.
While slightly entertaining, I was nonetheless disappointed by the lack of the professional production I had been hoping for. Nonetheless, I like to consider myself a rather tolerant individual, and applauded just as loudly and with as much conviction as the most enthusiastic of patrons.
Hopefully, future shows will be more rewarding and of a higher caliber than this particular production.
The shows that I hope to see include (feel free to recommend any others!)
- The Phantom of the Opera
- Aida
- West Side Story
- Grease
- Romeo & Juliet
- Dirty Dancing
- Matilda
I know this was a long post---the show tonight was just....extremely peculiar in nature!
The next time you visit Chicago I will have to take you to the Shakespeare Theater. It is a small, very professional, outstanding acting company and theater :)!
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