 Last Day in London |
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It's midnight on our last night. We had such a busy last day! We headed back again to tkts and stood in the rain for tickets to see Les Misérables because we're dorky and we figured we might as well see it one more time while we had a chance.  We then headed to the Imperial War Museum, whose amazing Holocaust exhibit had me in tears pretty much throughout the entire thing. It was truly so well-done and gripping and moving that had we seen nothing else in all of London, it alone would have been worth the trip. I will never forget so much about it, like the drawings and cards that a little Jewish girl and a little German girl would exchange when the German girl would sneak into the Warsaw ghetto to see her best friend, or the little bear that the little boy held in the years that he hid in a cabinet until his legs became deformed, and so much more, but especially the video of the survivors that played at the end of the exhibit. One man said that he will never return to Germany because he would see the older German men and wonder which camp they worked in and if the gold in their rings came from his mother's teeth. Another man said he swore to himself every day as a little boy that if he were to survive, he would tell everyone what happened, but that he became an old man and he still hadn't told a soul until one day his grown daughters came to him and said, "You have to tell us what happened to you." And he realized that if he couldn't tell his own children that they couldn't tell their children. And so he told them, finally, after all those years. One woman said that it's like when you throw a stone into a lake. The water gets rocked by the stone and sooner or later the ripples subside and the lake becomes calm again but the stone remains at the bottom. She said that the Holocast is like that to her. The lake has calmed, but there is still a stone sitting in the bottom of her heart. It was amazing. These people were amazing.  We followed that incredible exhibit with a mad dash to the Globe to see the all-woman production of Much Ado About Nothing, which was very enjoyable. Our original seats left us staring at the side of a pillar that blocked all of the action, so at intermission we demoted ourselves to the groundling position and it got much better from there. I became obsessed with figuring out who the woman was who (most excellently) played Benedick because I KNOW I've seen her before but STILL haven't figured it out. 
We then met up with Annie, a regular poster over at The Usual Suspects and a friend of Melissa's, for a quick dinner at Wagamama! We gabbed and got to know about each other a little bit in the short time that we had. I'm very glad that she suggested meeting because she truly was a delightful person and I hope we meet again someday. Her job sounds like the coolest on earth and I liked hearing about all about her big family and all of her friends that she has all over creation. I made her pose for a photo with me in Chinatown. She was a great sport and a doll.  Then it was time for the show. I thought that Jean Valjean wore an expression that was vaguely reminiscent of that of Ron Burgundy. He reminded my sister of someone who's allergic to bees who's just had his arm injected with epinephrine. His voice was that of someone regurgitating a vile concoction of gravel and sand. I don't know. I just do not know. Marius sounded like basically a clone of Michael Ball except more like someone who crawled up Michael Ball's nose or butt and sang from there, mimicking almost dead-on the general tone of his voice, but being squashed around the ears by a nostril or butt cheek so as to not quite be able to hear and thus locate the note he was trying to achieve. When Cosette hit the high notes, my sister said quite correctly that it was like that sound a balloon makes when you slowly let out the air. Eponine, played by an understudy, acquitted herself nicely, I thought, and Gavroche and the Thénardiers were fantastic. But it was Enjolras, played by Jonathan Williams, who clearly stole the show. STOLE IT. Surprised to see now that I'm looking at the cast sheet that he was also an understudy, I can say easily that he had the strongest voice onstage by far and was HOT LIKE FIRE to boot. Why they did not make him Marius so that Marius would actually be a feasible romantic lead and a man worthy of being carried through the sewers by Jean Valjean or why they didn't slap a beard on him and have him play Jean Valjean himself, I will never know. I could not take my eyes off of him the entire time, and when the best actor, best singer, and best looking overall hot dude in the production is understudying a secondary role when he could EASILY be Marius (Jean Valjean would admittedly be a stretch because of age and size) -- you've got a problem. The company overall was very strong. All of the soloists were great and the chorus always sounded beautiful -- but the leads. Gah! I mean, Jean Valjean would all of a sudden let out a piercing wail of a note in a totally random and inappropriate moment like it was suddenly 1973 and his voice was stuck into a socket shooting out the electrified shrieking tone of Ted Neeley playing Jesus Christ Superstar. Which Jean Valjean should not sound like. EVER! Still, despite not being perfect, it was an enjoyable evening and a good way to cap off our stay in London.  About this time in ...
© Copyright 2004 elb |
Note: I finally looked up the Much Ado information when I got home and realized that I recognized Josie Lawrence, who did such a great job playing Benedick, from Whose Line Is It Anyway? |
