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Just me talking about costume-y kind of stuff
We spent all day at the British Museum, mostly looking at mummies and other antiquities that were stolen from other countries. This idea had never bothered me before, but it does now, especially after the Hobby Lobby scandal. The museum had renovations done since I was last here (in the 1980's). The inner courtyard was enclosed with what is basically a glass dome. See photo below. There's a new building in the middle which houses the massive gift shop which sits on top of the bathrooms which are down a long spiral stairway in the basement. These are the only toilets in the museum, so plan accordingly. The British Museum is the oldest public museum in the world, but the Victoria and Albert Museum has the world's oldest cafe in a museum. More about that later.
The highlights for me were the Rosetta Stone, the Sutton Hoo artifacts, and of course, the mummies. There are no paintings in the British Museum, those are in the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery (two different museums which I only realized after reading an essay by Neil Gaiman in which he said he didn't realize it either and he's from there). We did the Egyptian galleries first, then the Asian galleries, We bought lunch for $7 from a cart inside the museum, then took it outside to eat in the fresh air. It was a baguette with meat and cheese, a bag of crisps, and a bottle of water. The museum lacks proper Texas air-conditioning and there were entirely too many people all crowded in there, so we needed to de-stress outside for awhile. After lunch, we went to the European galleries for Sutton Hoo, and then the Asian Galleries and finally the Classical Galleries.
Egyptian GallerySutton Hoo GalleryClassical GalleryMesopotamian galleryAsian GalleryThe Map
It was a half a mile walk to the British Museum from our hotel. On the way we discovered our favorite tea shop, Drury, which was right across the street from our hotel. On the way home from the museum, we stopped in for tea for the first time and then went back every chance we could.
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We spent all day at the British Museum (that will be an entirely separate blog, don't worry, I'll get to it) and then ate dinner at Punjab, which was Indian food and only about four blocks away. The food was delicious--I had lamb korma and pistachio kulfi for dessert. It was a half a mile walk to the theatre from the restaurant. Our seats were in the very last row of the second balcony. We were basically looking straight down at the set. Luckily, the set included an upper level for Charlie's office that got used quite a bit as well as Lola's stage, and the Milan catwalk being slightly elevated. The production was wonderful. I had seen the movie several years ago so we were very excited to get tickets to the show, esp. for the $40 we paid for the tickets. We were stunned to find out at intermission that we were watching the understudy perform the role of Charlie. His name was Jordan Fox and he was great. Of course, Simon-Anthony Rhoden as Lola, was phenomenal. I loved everything about it: the costumes, the scenery, the makeup and hair, and especially the choreography. One of the Angels did a backflip in her 6 inch heels and then went into the splits. And all of these actors were probably over 6 feet tall. Amazing athleticism and amazing boots that can take it. I've included the official trailer from the show so you can see a bit of it.
This was our view from the last row of the opening look for the scenery--the outside of the factory. Kinky Boots was the first of only two shows that we saw on our trip that was contemporary.
Here's the factory set with Charlie's elevated office and the wonderful, colorful windows. Scenic Design was by David Rockwell, Lighting Design by Kenneth Posner. Notice how dull the colors of the factory employees costumes are at the beginning of the show. Their costumes evolve as Lola comes into their world and changes it for the better.
Here's a photo of the factory employees' costumes after Lola and her Angels have left their mark--much brighter and more playful.
Here are the costumes from the finale in Milan. The costumes on the Angels are amazing, but notice also how much more fashionable the factory employees costumes have become!
Costume Designer GRegg Barnes
Gregg has 14 costume design credits on Broadway. He was nominated for seven Tonys and has won two. I've found three different interviews with Gregg on his designs for Kinky Boots. My takeaway from reading them is how much research he had to do on drag shows, because he'd never seen one before, even though he'd been in New York for 20 years. I love his renderings style. Here's six of his designs for the Angels' finale costumes. He uses guache and vellum and then transfers his designs to dyed paper. If you watch the video closely, you can see how he also uses glitter and sequins on the renderings.
T.O. Dey Shoes is the real life New York shoe company that made all the boots for the show. They will custom make a pair for you too, if you've got the money. The price range on the FAQ is $600-$3,000. A bit steep for my purse, and that doesn't include making the custom last (the mold of your feet that all of your custom shoes would be made on). That's a seperate charge.
The Adelphi TheatreThe Map
This was my third time to see a production of Chess. I saw it once at ACTF back in the 80's and again in El Paso at the UTEP Dinner Theatre where many of my fellow students were cast in the show. I bought the cast album after "One Night In Bangkok" aired on MTV with Murray Head. Lest we forget what that was like, here it is.
Needless to say, the earlier productions I saw were college shows with mere students for singers and a Texas fine arts budget line. I never saw a professional production of Chess back when it was new, but this re-boot version was amazing. I was surprised to see how timely and relevant it still is to our world situation today. And I had completely forgotten that the American's name is Trumper. Ha!
The other thing I didn't know until after I started doing some research for this blog is that this show has undergone many script changes since the concept album, which is probably why I felt that this version was so timely and relevant, because it had just been updated for this revival. I had no idea that the two productions I had seen in America in the late 80's/early 90's were different from the concept album, different from the original production in the West End and would also be different from the revised version I am now telling you about. It's amazing how much the authors have changed the show and are continuing to change it. Another newly revised version opened at the Kennedy Center earlier this year. In the 30+ years since the concept album, the authors have moved songs around, cut them, wrote new ones, and gave old songs to different characters, and that's just what they did to the music. They also completely changed plot elements like where the chess match is played, how many chess matches are played, who wins the chess match, what country of origin characters were from, gave Svetlana a dad that's either alive or dead, captured or free, and added or deleted a CIA agent who's either undercover or not. I don't know how anyone keeps up with this. If you're really interested in the difference between all the versions, here's this Wikipedia article that explains it all for you. Our View
We were on the third balcony, but there were so many things staged on ladders, plus with the tons of projections, we had a great view. As you can see the orchestra was on a platform near the top of the set, which was at our eye level. If you scroll down there's a photo that shows the view of the theatre from the stage and you can see how high up we were, because it doesn't really look like it from this photo.
I was totally blown away by this production, both directorially and technically. Let's discuss the performance aspects first. Freddy Trumper, the American, was played by Canadian lead singer of Mike + the Mechanics, Tim Howar. He was perfect. The Russian was played by Michael Ball, who you may remember as Marius in Les Miserables or as one incarnation of The Phantom, after Michael Crawford. They were both great. Amazing voices. Benny and Bjorn (and Tim Rice) did such a great job of typifying a country's culture, especially ours in America. During the opening ceremony, this staging included a gigantic Uncle Sam on stilts, cheerleaders tumbling and making pyramids, male twirlers with batons, the whole news circus with ads, and Freddy's name on everything. That's definitely the US now. Perhaps it was always that way and I was too young to get it or the previous productions didn't put such a fine point on it.
The choreography by Stephen Mear, was amazing as well. As already mentioned, there was tumbling, twirling, and stilts in Act One. Act Two just raised the stakes. In "One Night in Bangkok" the ensemble did martial arts, aerial work on silks, and twirled fire! Finally the meaning of the lyrics "the queens we use would not excite you" was staged correctly with both boys and girls being the "pearls" referred to in the "golden cloisters". The scenery/lighting/projections literally stole the show. The UTEP dinner theatre production had done the light up chess board floor back in the 80's and at the time I thought that was amazing. This production took it to a whole 'nother level by literally scattering the chess board squares all over the stage and then using them to project onto. The whole show was being filmed and fed live to the screens above the stage which made it seem like you were watching it on ESPN or Fox News, depending on the scene. Christina Cunningham was the costume designer. I found her website, which I've linked to below, but can't find a photo of her anywhere. The costumes for the ensemble were my favorite part of her design. Everytime they came out in a different costume I was amazed. I wish there had been more about the costumes in the program or online. I wish I had more photos to show you of all the great costumes, especially from the opening ceremony, but alas, I don't. If they put out a DVD of this production, I will definitely buy it. Production PhotosPressThe original recording
If you haven't seen this show, here's the entire album, assuming I did this correctly, in a series of 18 videos. The music is really good.
London Coliseum
I found out from the website, linked to below, that you can get a backstage tour of the theatre. It's more than 100 years old! And it's been newly restored to its original Edwardian aesthetic.
English National Opera
The London Coliseum is the home of the English National Opera. In fact, this production of Chess was the fourth collaboration of ENO with the GradeLinnit theatre company to produce a musical. The company of opera singers made up half of the Chess ensemble. I didn't figure any of that out until after we got back to the hotel and I had a chance to read the $5 program. Again, that's in pounds. But these signs were hanging in the toilets (no one says bathrooms over there) because clearly ENO has a sense that "regular" people are afraid of opera and are trying to change their misconceptions about it.
The Map
It was only a half a mile walk to get to the theatre from our hotel. That day I totalled 23,244 steps. Things we did before we saw the show: Went to Trafalgar Square, looked at awesome paintings in the National Gallery, took the tube to Hyde Park Station so we could walk through Hyde Park and see the Peter Pan statue. We also took a side trip to Harod's in which I met a real life Doorman and took his photo for Sylvan. Sylvan wants to be a doorman when he grows up. It was his Halloween costume two years ago. Sylvan was disappointed that the Harod's Doorman's uniform didn't have gold epaulettes. And before the show we ate at Nando's.
We went to dinner at Nando's first, which I highly recommend, not only because their PERi-PERi chicken is to die for, but because you get ice in your drink, free refills, and it's right by the theatre. We are still so very tired, but not too tired to take silly photos with the Cheeky Nando's rooster, who's name is Barci, short for Barcelos.
Harrod's DoormanPeter Pan Statue in Hyde Park
I was so excited to finally see The Globe after watching David Tennant trod its boards as Doctor Who in "The Shakespeare Code". In case you haven't seen that episode, here's the last bit when the Carrionites are attacking during The King's Men's production of Love's Labour's Won.
Unfortunately, this was the first thing we did after getting to Killeen airport at 7am, a seven hour layover in Dallas, a nine hour flight, being death marched all around London during the day, plus a 1.6 mile walk from our hotel to the Globe, and being awake for 36 hours total by the time the show was over. We had to "hire" seat cushions for $5 as well as buy programs also for $5. I'm using the $ symbol but you should just read that as pounds. My head was murky and I was falling asleep even with the cushions which didn't really mitigate the truly uncomfortable, ridiculously hard benches, it wasn't enough to keep me awake. Another problem was the partially obstructed view we had from sitting behind a small pillar, as well as looking at the stage from behind the giant stage right column, which cost $22. The groundlings were only paying $5, but they had to stand up for the entire 2:45 running time, which was something our sleep-deprived, jet lagged, death-marched legs couldn't have done. As a side note, we were getting on average between 10-14,000 steps a day prior to this trip. That day I got 24,290 steps. So, maybe it was a good show, but in the state I was in I certainly couldn't appreciate it. To make the whole thing worse, the space is open at the top, which is lovely as long as there aren't a cadre of helicopters flying overhead during the show. Sometimes the actors would pause, but most of the time they just kept going, trying to be even louder than the racket outside.
Production Photos
First of all, these photos are from the reviews that I've linked to below. No photography during the shows, of course, but the show was so odd, you need some photos for clarification. The first odd thing about this production was that the newly appointed Artistic Director, Michelle Terry, was also the title character. The show was cast gender blind, ethnicity blind, and disability blind. Hamlet, Horatio, Laertes, and Marcellus were female; Ophelia was male. Ophelia, Marcellus, and Guildenstern were non-white. Guildenstern was also deaf and performed her role using BSL (British Sign Language). So, on the surface that seems like an interesting choice. I am all for diversity in theatre (as in everything), but I just couldn't seem to find the underlying reason for the gender swap. If all the male roles had been played by women and all the female roles had been played by men, that would have sent a message. Then I would have felt like they were making a statement about the nature of masculinity/femininity, and the resulting power struggle in relationships. I am thinking of the French PSA for sexual harassment from several years back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4UWxlVvT1A which you can watch here. But only some of the male roles were played by females and only one female role was played by a man, so I'm not sure what that says.
I was confused by Ophelia wearing an Elizabethan dress (no padding for breasts), with his own short hair and no stereotypical "female" makeup. This wouldn't have been as confusing if Gertrude (who was played by a woman but I had to look it up in the program to be sure) hadn't also had a short "boy" haircut, flat chest, and a mannish face.
Another confusing thing was the mix of Elizabethan and modern costuming. Ophelia and Gertrude were in appropriate Elizabethan dress some of the time, while Hamlet was all over the place, even wearing a sad clown costume a la Pagliacci, when "he" was mad. In case you are not familiar with Italian opera, it looks like this. The fencing match at the end was costumed much the same as the Kenneth Branagh production, traditional 19th C white padded tunic and foils.
Ellan Parry, costume Designer
From the program notes:
"I've always felt that designing costumes for actors I don't know is a bit like trying to buy birthday presents for strangers, so I generally try to keep the design process as collaborative and as dialogic as I can, even in a more standardised process, and I love it when actors are interested in engaging with the design world. My heart sinks a little when an actor says "I don't care what you put me in". What we choose-or don't choose-to wear and own and carry with us can say so much about who we are, where we've come from, and who we want to be--some of the most fundamental questions that theatre asks of us. To be invited into a process where all these decisions are made during rehearsals has been truly inspirational. The main challenge from my point of view has been to tie it all together so that everyone's brilliant ideas and contributions can somehow work as a whole, whilst embracing the frictions and contradictions. It's an intricate tapestry we're creating, and if you tug a thread in one place, it starts to unravel somewhere else. Whilst the two plays aren't strictly set in the Elizabethan period, we've definitely drawn on the practices of Early Modern theatre in our design choices. Elizabethan theatre companies embraced a kind of playful and expedient anachronistic eclecticism in their visual worlds. Within a single play, audiences would have seen a cheerful mash-up of objects and clothing recycled from earlier productions, made or acquired specifically for a character or scene, the second-hand finery of aristocrats alongside the actors' own clothes--contemporary, historical and fantastical costumes and props meeting and mingling on the same stage. One striking feature of Elizabethan theatre would have been the sight of people onstage--alongside the kids and queens and gods and heroes--who looked and dressed just like the people in the audiences. This was something that seemed especially important for us to embrace here in this space where the relationship between actor and spectator is so intimate and immediate. Raiding the Globe's extensive store, a number of posh and not so posh charity shops, and even our actors' own wardrobes, hal allowed us to create a visual world which I hope feels perhaps more owned and inhabited than designed, a world haunted by memories of past productions (Jack dressed in the doublet worn by his Rosalind when he played Orland in 2009) and of loved ones (Shubham's mother's dress re-made in white). And of course, a few specially made treats, to join the costumes handing in the store, and haunt the next ensemble." Links to reviews of Hamlet
The Globe website with a synopsis of the play, videos of rehearsal, an interview with Nadia Nadarajah, the deaf actor who played Guildenstern, and info about the production.
Time Out London article on the production.
The Guardian article discussing both Hamlet and As You Like It, with respect to Michelle Terry's directorial and artistic director debut.
An article by the English Dept. of King's College in London on the use of gender blind casting in both Hamlet and As You Like It, which were being done in rep the week we were there.
The Globe itself
We saw the show on Tuesday, and came back for a backstage tour the following Monday. That was a much better experience because I'd slept since then. The tour cost $17 but you get $2 off if you bring your ticket from the show. The Exhibition is included free with your tour ticket and you can spend as much time as you like going through it.
The Exhibition
The Exhibition is a display of artifacts that shows what it was like in Shakespeare's Day, as well as the First Folio, a model of the Globe Theatre, and various costumes and props from former productions. From the program description:
"You can imagine what was once London's most notorious entertainment district. Find out about 17th Century Bankside, the tricks of the Elizabethan stage--from blood to flying--and watch costume dressing, sword-fighting and printing press demonstrations." The BACKSTAGE TOUR
The tour itself included more info on the history of the Globe, the building of the new globe and how that happened, the authentic building materials as well as the modern health and safety accomodations like the sprinkler system, indoor plumbing, and maximum seating capacity (much less than the original crammed in). We also got to sit in on a bit of rehearsal for As You Like It, which was also cast with actors of color, gender swaps, and actors with disabilities.
Map
In case you're interested in how we got there, this is our route. It took us over the Blackfriar's Bridge on the way there, but on the way home we took the Millenium Bridge, which is the one that the Death Eaters destroyed at the beginning of Deathly Hallows.
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Here are our intrepid travelers about to begin their international journey to the UK: 11 days in London with a side trip to Cambridge, and 5 days in Edinburgh, with two days for traveling. Three faculty members (one fearless leader, one British citizen, one mom-that's me) one adult husband to help chaperone, and 7 theatre students. We took planes, trains, and automobiles, plus a boat on our journey as well as thousands of photos along the way. We visited castles, palaces, museums, art galleries, and more. We saw a play, an opera, and 7 musicals, toured two theatres and the Royal Albert Hall. We crammed in as much history as we possibly could as well as popular culture. It just so happened that the Royal Wedding happened while we were in town. We also did walking tours of Rock and Roll history in London, the Jack the Ripper murders in Whitechapel, and Harry Potter sites in Edinburgh. We even climbed an extinct volcano known as Arthur's Seat, yes, that Arthur. It was an amazing trip and I am so thankful that my husband and I got to be a part of it. I know you all are anxious to hear all about it and see the multitude of photos, but I am still in a time crunch to churn out the rest of our Flash cosplay for the Greater Austin Comic con next weekend, so this is a promise, that I will get there, slowly but surely as the summer goes along. You'll just have to be patient. |
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March 2024
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