Madison Across the Pond: Day 12-17: Procrastination

Unfortunately, as soon as I caught up with my blog posts, we had a paper due in class, which is why I haven’t written anything for a few days. This is also unfortunate because we’ve done SO MANY THINGS in the past few days. So, buckle up buttercup because this is going to be a long post…

Thursday night we went to Shakespeare’s Globe and saw their production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Although at first, I was not looking forward to the groundling/17^th century-peasant experience of standing for three hours, but this show ended up being one of my favorites that we’ve seen since being in England. It was definitely a more modern version of the classic play, which I enjoyed. For example, there was a short allusion to Beyonce’s Single Ladies and the fact that Puck’s magical powers were represented by a squirt gun as she ran around spraying the audience. There was a good amount of interaction with the audience, a lot of humor, and the occasional song. Overall, I thought it was amazing and it made three hours fly by (although my feet could disagree).

We only have class Mondays through Thursdays, so this weekend was our first completely free weekend in London. About a week ago when we were purchasing our tickets for the London Eye, we discovered that they were running a special. You could purchase tickets for the Eye and the London Aquarium for a cheaper price, so a few of us decided to indulge in their special offer. In all honesty, I’m biased toward to the Ohio aquariums, but it was still a fun experience.

In addition, while we were still living in Stratford, a few of us had decided to purchase tickets for the Harry Potter Studio Tour and Friday was the magical day (ha, magical, get it?). The journey there was quite a trek because our travel passes only work for London’s Zones 1 and 2, however, the shuttle that takes everyone from the train station to the Warner Bros. Studio is located in Zone 8… (For those of you who don’t know how the Zones work, the center of London is located in Zone 1 and subsequent Zones expand from there.) Therefore, we had to walk, take two underground trains, one over ground train, and a shuttle in order to reach the studio. Once we arrived, we were shuffled into a movie theatre-esque room and shown some behind the scenes footage of the series that took over the world. Once the film was over, the screen was raised, and behind it were the physical doors to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as if it appeared by magic. Now, I am by no means as hardcore about Harry Potter as some fans, but I did grow up with the movies and read the books, so I figured this would be a pretty cool experience. Everything was laid out as if you were watching it on the silver screen. Every small object or reference that I had forgot about from the movies was in the studio. I even tried butterbeer (which to be honest tastes just as good as when you make it at home with cream soda). Overall, it was a lot of fun being able to live in that world for even a few hours.

We weren’t able to do much on Saturday because we dedicated much of the day to writing our dreaded essays. It was one of our roommate’s birthdays, so once we finally finished we decided to get out of the house. Molly Bakes is this amazing milkshake place that serves milkshakes that look like works of art (See below for the proof that didn't last long).

London has some great deals on tickets for shows in the West End and anyone who is reading this probably knows that I love theatre. Therefore, I knew I wanted to see a bunch of shows while I was here. In addition, if you know how to find them, London has some great deals on their shows. So, on Sunday morning, I went to Leicester Square, which is where a lot of London’s theatres are, found a booth that sells discounted tickets, and bought a ticket for Guys and Dolls that day at 2:30. I have never seen the movie Guys and Dolls before or every seen it performed, so this was my first time witnessing it. I’ve got to say, it was a little strange seeing this classic American musical for the first time in England. It was a great show, but I feel like there were some continuity issues. For example, the actors would be referencing American dollars, but be holding up British pounds. In addition, you could occasionally hear some of the actor’s accents peeking through their American façade. However, it was still a great show and Richard Kind ended up playing Nathan Detroit, so that was a pretty cool surprise.

After class on Tuesday, we were able to visit the Tate Modern. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of art, however, I am definitely more inclined toward the music and theatre. I’m attempting to learn more about photography, but that is the extent of my abilities regarding visual art. With that being said, I love art museums, but I do not understand modern art specifically. Monet and Dalí I can understand, but pieces that are extremely ambiguous go right over my head. For example, there was an entire room filled with nothing but stuffed burlap sacks. That was it. This piece might have some grand explanation with life-changing meaning, however, that explanation was clearly wasted on me.

Later that evening, one of my roommates and I went to a production of In The Heights. I had never seen this show before, but I knew it was written by the same person who wrote Hamilton, the show that has recently swept the musical theatre world, so I had hopes that it would be good. And it was! It was also performed in an old underground train station, which was pretty cool to experience.