Tuesday 3 August 2010

Two Days of Theater

Well this week has been busy....besides working, I have seen two shows in two days.

Yesterday morning when I was at work, two of my friends went down to the discount theater ticket booth in Leicester Square and got tickets for Hair, and they were nice enough to get one for me too. Tickets were only £20, and they were in row AA, the front row. If you don't know what Hair is about...it's about 1970's America during the Vietnam War protests. There is nudity, and cursing, and the whole thing is pretty vulgar. Because we sat in the front row, the cast members were crawling over us and standing on our armrests singing, and it was absolutely fantastic. The music was great, and the acting was even better. In the beginning of the musical, the main character, Burger, even had me hold his jeans while he danced around in some loin-cloth thing. Very interesting. At the end of the show, the three of us even got to dance onstage with the cast.

Tonight I went on a program-sponsored event to Shakespeare's Globe Theater to see Henry IV Part 1. Although it was a history, I did find it really funny. Of course it was filled with word play and puns that I would have easily missed if I had just read it on my own. We had standing seats right next to the stage, so although it was easy to see all of the action, it was hard to pay attention near the end when my feet were getting sore. The theater itself was very cool, and it was done up to look just like it would have when it premiered. The sets, trap doors, music, and costumes would all have been the same as what I saw tonight (it looked just like it did in Shakespeare in Love). Between scenes and acts, the cast sang and did little skits to distract the audience from the set changes. I wish we would have seen a whole story though. I may never know the ending, or Part 2, of Henry IV...

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