London, week four: Shakespeare and the Phantom

Monday 1^st – Sunday 7^th October:

Good morning and happy birthday to me! It’s never really the same when your birthday’s on a Monday; there seems to be a dull knowledge that today will simply be another working day. However, it is what it is and I made darn sure I went in with supplies: chocolate spongey goodness. It was also someone else’s birthday, so there was much cake to be had; dare I suggest the sacriligious idea of too much cake? 

Overindulgence may well be the theme for the week, as Friday night was definitely a night of too much: an evening of after-work drinks was supposed to be a quiet affair but it ended in a wine-induced stupor and a soggy foot. This is what happens when people don’t stop buying you Malbec. It leads to gin-based drinks and illusions of grand dancing, stopping off at a Parisian man whose work chum was not best chuffed when we kept Parisian man hostage for a while. Moving to another place, my friend couldn’t keep control of her wily glass which slipped from her fingers and shattered all over the floor, drenching my foot in vodka and something. We called it a night. I promptly went home and was rather ill. At least I made it till I was off the Tube.

What bothers me most about the night, though, is that I can’t remember what I did with the rubbish from the chicken and chorizo wrap I had in the steady drizzle...

Remarkably, there were no after-effects the next day. I was most pleased because I wanted to visit the ‘Writing Britain’ exhibition at the British Library, where manuscripts of yore lay enshrined in a carefully dim lighting. Dickens, Tolkien, Wordsworth, Orwell, and du Maurier awaited. Skipping out with glee into glorious sunshine I pottered in to King’s Cross and into the Library. But what is this I see before me? Not a dagger, but, oh, the horror! The exhibition had been over for two weeks! Curse my lack of information. 

Yet all was well, for I had another exhibition in mind: the marvellous ‘Shakespeare: Staging the World’. Fate had obviously intended this for me: that moment when my eyes rested on a First Folio edition of the great wordsmith brought forth a mist of tears. This is my temple. The Book for me. Sentimental? Possibly. Justifiably so? Yes. The trail weaved its way through Elizabethan London, Venice, Jacobean times, the New World, scattering in exciting artefacts from Shakespeare’s very time over 400 years ago. Swords, coins, armour, maps, globes, anything you can think of! One was a bear’s skull, canines filed down to give the dogs a fighting chance. The oddest piece stood aloft in the Jacobean witchcraft section: an eye. A mostly decomposed eye of a man who had been torn apart for his religion. His eye had rolled into the crowd and someone had pocketed it. Gruesome but thrilling! How often does one get the chance to see a 400-year old eye? And to top it all off, beside it was the quotation from King Lear: ‘Out, vile jelly!’

So, museum, check. Next, the theatre for a spectacular performance of The Phantom of the Opera. I was in the first row of the circle where I could press my chin to the cold railing and observe the audience below and the orchestra pit filled with musicians ensuring their instruments were in fine working order. Everyone was looking around, beaming with delight at the theatre. It made me wonder why it is perfectly acceptable to gaze around in a theatre or a bar yet on a train everyone sits head down desperately trying to avoid eye contact. Is it the frivolous nature, the social occasion? Are people more inclined to be forgiving when they let slip the facade of strict business? Perhaps it is the tacit admission that nothing is real in the theatre, that we are not ourselves but occularly consuming the characters onstage and letting them become a part of us. Or perhaps people are simply more human when they are excited.

Glitz and sparkle and some very impressive lungs swamped the stage from beginning to end. One of the most memorable parts was the Masquerade ball, where the designers really went to town creating those costumes; they were fabulous. Jewels, pom-poms, hoops, silks, velvets, fans, feathers, hats, wands all matched mis-matchedly in the most wonderful choreography, floating upwards and snapping down, swirling, twirling, cavorting figures in a dizzying whirlwind of colours and fabrics. My eyes were like saucers, and I felt like Alice in her Wonderland.

Epilogue:

And so fare ye well, big red buses and bright red phone booths. Thus ended my expedition to the Big Smoke: on a definite cultural high. The ‘Ultimate Hot Chocolate’ at Carlisle station on the return journey, however, was less than a high and certainly not ultimate. What self-respecting beverage maker puts the chocolate sprinkles at the bottom of the cup? Everyone knows it’s drink, cream, marshmallows, then chocolate sprinkles. Amateur.