A Week of Theatre!

I’m still playing catch up, so this isn’t about this past week, but the week before.

In brief, I spent a lot of the week trying to arrange a meet-up with Rachel, a friend from midrasha, before giving up an goign to her for shabbos. But that is another post. Instead, let us talk about the theater I got to see!

My Theatre in London class finally went to see a play. Clybourne Park. It’s actually an American play, but it’s having its first extended run in London. It’s about the white family in A Raisin in the Sun that sold their house to a black family in the 1959, and then the changes in the neighborhood until 2010. It’s a fascinating play, and it very strongly comments on all the things we are trained not to talk about in polite society. I have never sat through such an awkward play. But it was amazing, and while all of the actors but one were British, the accents were perfect. I do highly recommend it if it ever makes it to New York.

Wednesday after class I went to the Apple Store (as in the computers) in Covent Garden, which is the most gorgeous Apple Store I have ever seen. It used to be a carriage-house or something similar, and it’s all very old brick and glass. Anyway, I’d been having problems with my laptop, and they ended up replacing my batter for me, which is wonderful. There are some things I don’t like about Apple (price, for one) but the system of international customer support they have is simply unparalleled.

I walked from there to the theatre which will later be playing Much Ado About Nothing, staring Catherine Tate and David Teannant. Now, I should have bought tickets much earlier, as it was nearly sold out. It’s a summer run, so I’m only going to be here for the first few weeks of the run, which was kind of bad. I ended up buying a not-so-great ticket for more than I wanted to spend, but I absolutely have to see the show. Timing is a little odd for it, but I’ll work it out when the time comes.

Anyway, I met Peter at the theater, as he was thinking of getting a ticket as well (he’s also a big Doctor Who fan.) He had found out that Catherine Tate was in a play at the National Theatre, so we decided to grab the tube down to the National and see if she happened to be playing Wednesday night. No luck, and advance tickets were all sold out.

BUT we found at that the National Theatre holds a certain amount of £10 tickets until the day of the performance, and the box office opens at 9:30 AM, and the play was on for Thursday night! We were warned that some people do line up as early as 6 o’clock. We decided to leave our dorm at 8 and see what happened.

When we got there the line wasn’t terrible. The National Theatre had 3 theaters inside, and one of them was playing this crazy-popular new version of Frankenstein, directed by Danny Boyle and starring Benedict Cumberbatch, so we assumed most people were in line for that. But when we got to the desk there were only two tickets left, literally at opposite ends of the theater – one in the first row, left hand side, and one aaaaaall the way in the back, right hand side. We got both and decided to swap seats during intermission.

The play is called Season’s Greetings and it’s one of those holiday plays, where the whole family comes back for Christmas and there is tension. It was a comedy, but it was also a bit sad. I wasn’t particularly enamored with it, and I’m glad I didn’t pay over £10, but the actors were all very good.

And of course, we met Catherine Tate afterwards, which was the whole point. I bought the programme just so she could sign it.