earlgreytea68 | Excerpts from the Travel Journal: Day Three--"Love's Labour's Lost"

The next day was “Love’s Labour’s Lost” day, and so we woke, had breakfast, showered (that bathroom is so beautifully flooded with natural light), and headed into Stratford. Which was a disaster. Because it was the Mop Fair. The entire town center was closed to cars because it was being occupied by a carnival. This threw Verity (ha ha ha!) into a dither but we found parking, paid, and walked into the town.

Carnivals look pretty much the same on both sides of the Atlantic, but it’s a bit jarring to see some cheap rides set up in front of 17^th-century houses. There was something very Blackpool about the whole thing. We went to the TI, to wait for jlrpuck, who ran back to hide Verity (ha ha ha!), and then embarked into the mayhem of the carnival. We were searching for Internet access, but the Internet café was closed on the weekends so we ended up at the library, a typically ancient-looking building apparently donated by Andrew Carnegie.

arctacuda

and I split a half-hour of Internet time while jlrpuck took an hour, and we caught up on e-mail and Red Sox scores and also the news, even though we were trying to avoid thinking about our sad election and the fact that America has destroyed the entire world economy. We also saw that a shark had a virgin birth. This clearly means something, we just don’t know what.

Once we left the library, we walked two doors down to Shakespeare’s birthplace. jlrpuck and I had already been inside, so we just took photos and then ducked into the Christmas shop across the way, where we had a nice discussion with the girls that worked there about crying over Sex and the City and about how much fun sing-alongs can be.

We were hungry by then and looking for something to eat, so we stopped to pick up pasties for lunch: quick, cheap, and portable. I went with chicken vegetable, and it was very good, with a bit of a kick. We ate while walking toward Holy Trinity Church,

which is where Shakespeare is buried.

The church is, as per usual, very old and very beautiful.

We wandered through it taking pictures, and then out into the churchyard.

It was another gorgeous day, and the churchyard—and the church itself—is right on the Avon.

We strolled along, taking photos and enjoying the weather. We ended up, possibly predictably, at the Courtyard Theatre, where we ducked into the RSC gift shop to buy lots of David Tennant souvenirs. What? Huh? We were supposed to be there for Shakespeare? Really? The RSC plays the play on a screen in the lobby as it’s going on, and there was a little moment of giddy disbelief as we stood there, watching Tennant in there.

Once we bought our posters and programs, we went in search of the Dirty Duck, which was where we were supposed to meet chicklet73 friend T before “Love’s Labour’s Lost.” The Dirty Duck was the world’s most crowded bar, and I can’t quite believe it is where the cast hangs out.

At this point, we went back to the flat to get ready for the play. I took a shower and learned that hot water is not so much plentiful during the day. This is because the house is open for tours, and actually quite flooded with tourists. There were people wandering over the grounds and basically using up all our hot water, which was interfering with my very important plan to do my hair nicely so that DT would fall in love with me at first sight. Alack and alas! I blame the tourists!

We left the flat very, very early to go to the play, because there had been a ton of traffic coming into Stratford when we’d left that afternoon. Naturally, this ensured that we encountered zero traffic and arrived at the theater with tons of time to spare.

Dinner was a cup of tea and tomato soup at the café at the theater. We sat outside, so that the tea and soup were even more lovely in the slight chill. Dinner over, we still had plenty of time before the show. Rather than just sitting around the café for a while, we went for a walk along the Avon. jlrpuck’s shoes were bothering her, so there was a decision made to go across to the grassy park, where she could go barefoot. To get there, we took the World’s Most Ridiculous Ferry (which I had, incidentally, told the ferry pilot we weren’t going to take, and then we turned around and took it). The River Avon is not very wide. One could swim across it without effort. So it amused me greatly to get into a small wooden boat and be transported about a minute across this tiny river, and then get off. The ferry pilot just runs this same minute route, over and over, back and forth, all day. It struck me as being like the ferry across to the Underworld.

Once on the other side, we wandered around that side of the river. jlrpuck took her shoes off for a little while but soon put them back on because the grass was freezing. We walked along, killing time, and coming to the conclusion that I needed to be killed in some way, because then DT would hear how I’d travelled all the way from America and died just an hour before the start of the play, and then he would have to come to my funeral, and then he would give arctacuda John Simm’s number.

Around this time, we heard from poor T, who was stuck at work and couldn’t make it and so we had to sell the ticket back. There was much debate among us as to which seat we should sell, but I said that it did not bother me to sit by myself (because it doesn’t) (oh, and because they were split pairs) so some lucky person got a third-row seat to David Tennant in “Love’s Labour’s Lost.” (That person turned out to be some random guy who didn’t speak to me the whole play.)

So there we were. All seated and ready for “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” starring David Tennant as Berowne. I had read the play at the beginning of the week, having never read it before, and it is an acutely witty and wordy play, crowded with Shakespearean banter. Tennant, as could have been predicted, rocked it. But I get ahead of myself.

I had third row seats, stage right, and word had gotten out by now that the actors start the play on the stage, while the audience is still being seated. And DT wandered to his mark directly from the entrance nearest me, walking right past me, yawning exaggeratedly. I would have whipped out my camera but we’d just been admonished not to take pictures. This did not stop everyone else in the theater from whipping out their cameras, so I followed suit. David walked, luckily, to my side of the stage. He laid down. I snapped one photo of him…

and then he immediately covered his face with a floppy straw hat. Um, boo. This was clearly an action meant to thwart photographers such as myself.

Then the play began, and it was fantastic, so much funnier in the watching than it had been in the reading, which is, of course, the trick with Shakespeare, to make iambic pentameter breathe.

LLL is an ensemble play in the true sense of the word, but Tennant was, in my opinion, clearly the star. He was lethally charming, as he played off the crowd. At one point he was required to throw his straw hat onto the tree branch, and missed it, and he just, you know, gave a DT look to the crowd. Almost absurdly adorable. Berowne can be an irritating character, a bit of a jerk really, especially during the play within the play part; he needs to be played by someone who makes you think he’s just the cutest thing ever. And DT is very good at that.

When Berowne is dry and sarcastic, you nod your head knowingly. When he is lazy and raffish, you grin with him. When he’s hiding in the tree, spying on the rest of his friends, joining in harmony (jlrpuck said he was out of tune. I thought he was adorable) as they sing they love, and Navarre chastises, “What will Berowne say?!,” there is a great pause as the audience looks to DT, perched in the tree, and DT just grins. Great moment. And then he leaps his way lightly out of the tree and launches into his “I am ashamed of you” speech, and it’s kind of a bastard-y thing to say but you just laugh at how adorable he is. And when he is found out, and DT is prancing about eating paper and squeaking, “My liege, I confess,” yeah, you’re glad Berowne is getting his comeuppance but you also think you’d hop up on the stage and make out with him, jerk and all. Or maybe that’s just me.

Tennant has a light touch with Shakespeare’s comedy, a way of making old-fashioned phrases shine with hilarity, which is vitally important in any Shakespeare play. Plus, Shakespeare writes strongly in broad farce sometimes, and DT is not afraid to don a terrible costume—complete with ginger beard—and a ridiculous Russian accent, in order to pretend to be a Muscovite. At the same time, Berowne has some lovely speeches. At least part of the reason why Shakespeare is so demanding is because of the way the parts jump between absurdity and earnestness in flickers of eyelashes. Berowne has an impassioned speech about the glory of love, and as Tennant delivers it you could hear a pin drop. He sheds his coat to show He Means Business and paces about the stage, and the words fall like plucks of harp strings over you. It’s remarkable, and amazing, and astonishing. His stage presence—the very force of his energy pushing the play along—is palpable.

I did not feel at any point like I was watching the Doctor, although I did feel like I was watching David Tennant. You can see why Berowne appealed to him—the irrepressible wit and charming cad and lovesick romantic are all impressive arrows in Tennant’s acting quiver, and it is not surprising that Berowne just feels like a comfortable role for him. Not challenging, not earth-shattering, just sheer, unequalled fun. And the tics you associate with a Tennant performance—the ear-tugging, the neck-scratching, the hair ruffling—were almost entirely absent. It seemed like you were watching David Tennant fool around with Shakespeare in his back garden on a Sunday afternoon.

Okay, and, moving on from, like, Serious Play Thoughts, OMG THIRD ROW ROCKED. Not the best place to see everything going on in the play but so the best place to ogle David. I spent a lot of time thinking, There. There in front of me. Oh, my God, that’s David Tennant’s hair along the back of his neck. Oh. My. God. I was most impressed with myself for not jumping onto the stage to touch it when it was right there. His blousy thing kept falling out of his breeches, and the breeches kept falling down, and there was much tucking and adjusting of clothing THAT HAPPENED RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. And I have this to say: If he were not a foot taller than me, I think DT and I could share clothing. Also, I got some first-rate tongue action (sadly, not like that) right at the start of Berowne’s rallying love speech, when Berowne pauses to marshal his thoughts and David’s tongue ventured out and upward toward his nose.

Behind me, the older gentleman who was clearly at the RSC for, you know, the Shakespeare, asked his wife, “What show is this Tennant bloke on?” and I almost burst out laughing.

At intermission—interval, as the Brits say—we went in search of our pre-ordered drinks, which were scattered all over the theater. I had order #35, and I went in search of it, finding several orders #35, none of which were mine. It turned out you had to pick up the drinks exactly where you’d ordered them, which makes sense but could have been a bit clearer.

We discussed the play, in which there were apparently actors other than David Tennant, not that I really noticed these people. I remarked that for all intents and purposes I was seeing a one-man play. arctacuda replied they could tell. They could see me from their seats, and they claim my eyes never left David Tennant the entire play. The minor players performed a little jig in the lobby, and it was time to go back.

When the play ended, it received very warm applause, but no standing ovation, which worried me except that I later found out that standing ovations are almost unheard of in the UK.

We did not do the running-to-the-stage-door thing, because we are old. Nor did we meet T’s friend A for drinks. A had a part in the play, and T had told us we could find her at the Dirty Duck at the end of the play, but it seemed weird to just seek out an actress with such an attenuated link to us so we went back to our lovely parking space.

At which point we were realized that we were all starving and completely out of luck, because after 10 pm on a Saturday there is literally nowhere to go eat. Not even the McDonald’s was open. We searched Verity (ha ha ha!) for grocery stores and she told us the nearest one was something like 14 miles away. We started to follow her, but then saw a sign for a 24-hour Tesco. “Huzzah!” we exclaimed, negotiating roundabouts to get to the store.

Which was closed.

We walked up and down in front of the store, bemused. Their definition of 24 hours, it seems, does not apply to Saturdays. “I want nachos,” I said, mournfully. “Why did you have to say that?” complained arctacuda. “Now I want nachos.” But in my defense, I was very drunk on David Tennant. I’d had a glass of wine at intermission, but not nearly enough to make me as drunk as I was acting. It was all the result of DT’s Sexy from THREE ROWS AWAY.

The gas station across from the Tesco was open, so we went there, and I ducked out of the car and up to the window where a woman was working.

“Hi,” I said, in sexy-drunken cheerfulness to the woman. “We’re looking for the nearest 24-hour grocery store.” She turned away from me, tapping her fingers on the cash register computer. I stood for a moment, bewildered. Then she turned back to me and just kind of shook her head. Feeling very much like the stupid American I am—at the RSC, I never could figure out how to properly flush the toilet in the bathroom near the café—and utterly defeated, I shuffled back to the car, and we decided to go home.

Verity (ha ha ha!) took us down this street we’d never been down before, and it was a bit terrifying in the dark, with fog rolling in. I kept complaining that I wanted nachos, and arctacuda said wouldn’t it be awesome if we suddenly came upon, rising out of the fog, a man selling nachos by the side of the road. Then we considered what kind of man would be selling nachos on a foggy, deserted road. But then we considered it might be John Simm dressed as a Russian. Or maybe naked Christopher Eccleston. You see, we could not decide whether Nacho Man was a benevolent or terrifying being. Arcatcuda says he could be an Old and New Testament double-sided figure.

We reached home, and the fog was rolling in. Nacho Man had either eaten the pig-cow-goats, or the fog had entirely shrouded them. Either seemed equally likely. Jlrpuck was off taking artistic photos of the fog over the park, and arctacuda told me that DT looked my way every time he said the word “love.” Somehow she then began singing Love Boat, and I told her I would pay her $100 if she got up during the RTD/JB talk and just started singing that theme.

Far too high on David Tennant to sleep, we went scrolling through the five precious channels we were provided with, and ended up settling on a Dustin Hoffman movie called Straw Dogs. It’s Dustin Hoffman, we reasoned. How bad can it be? TERRIBLE. This movie was horrifying. Everyone wanted to kill everyone else, but no one had any discernible motive, there were scary rape scenes and a terrifying long fight scene at the end that was basically a full-scale siege of an English country house. We watched in too much shock to change the channel. What I learned from this movie is this: Residents of small British villages hate Americans who moved there but the Americans will triumph using bear traps and shotguns. Profound. And a good way to attempt to counter the lingering aftereffects of David Tennant Sexy.

After Straw Dogs, we went to bed; perhaps not the wisest idea. Nacho Man was supposed to send me a DT dream but instead I got an awful dream about my grandmother dying and arctacuda got some fabulous dream in which DT “may have been naked.” Arctacuda said it was because I didn’t truly believe in Nacho Man (at one point, arctacuda came walking down the hallway calling “Nacho Man!,” then popped her head into the living room, asking, “Hey, did you guys hear that?” I was like, “You calling Nacho Man?” She was like, “Gasp! That was Nacho Man!” And I was like, “Why would Nacho Man call his own name?” And she was like, “He’s announcing himself.” Anyway. Moving on.) and that I needed to make an offering to him. “Nacho Man would like a teabag,” she proclaimed, and so off I went to place a teabag near the tortilla chips we’d bought (this was a bit later in the day; I’ll come to the grocery store outing). Nacho Man never sent me good dreams, though. I got a dream about David Tennant, in which I was organizing something for him and he was making unreasonable demands—always from off-screen; he never made an appearance—and people from work were lecturing me about something and it was awful and stressful. I think we ended up leaving the offering there. That was arctacuda’s idea. She wanted people to walk in and exclaim, “Why, what is this? It looks like a sacrifice of some sort.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

fid-gin.livejournal.com

Ha! I am cackling with glee at Nacho Man. "He's announcing himself!"

I want to go on vacation with you guys, it sounds ever so much more fun than our frantic, brief Oregon excursion of late.

From:

It depends on my mood

Excerpts from the Travel Journal: Day Three--"Love's Labour's Lost"

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