Love's Labour's Lost and Hamlet, 18th of October '08
I got up early to catch a bus at 8.40 that would take me to Stratford. I arrived there at 12, which left me with one hour to find the theater and meet up with svanderslice.
I found everything quite easily, and we had about 30 minutes left to get ourselves hyped up for the first play, which was scheduled for 1pm - Love's Labour's Lost.
They had an awesome stage setting with a tree and green hanging ornaments that substituted bushes and leaves. svanderslice took a picture - most of the pictures in this post were taken by her, and all of them were taken on her camera, since I didn't have mine with me.
You can look at it in more pretty on David Tennant's site here.
I'd read the play beforehand, and I thought it was funny then, but seeing it acted out on stage - and by David, no less - just added a whole new world of awesomeness to it. I think I was grinning the whole time, and from time to time laughing loudly. And in danger of repeating myself - David was amazing. He did the play in his natural accent, and you know, it's Shakespeare, but I never had any trouble at all understanding what he was on about. When he was speaking, the whole audience was just mesmerized. I don't think I've ever been in a room with about a thousand people with it being this silent. It was intense.
He totally went out of character at one point. The play started with the King's three minions - which he was one of (Berowne) - lazing around under the tree. He had a straw hat with him. When the King showed up to make them sign the contract and finally convinced Berowne to sign as well, Berowne - that is, David - took off the hat and threw it over to the tree so it ended up hanging on a branch. It were at least three meters to throw, and of course, the audience applauded when he managed to get the hat stuck on the branch, and when they did, he grinned and said, "Every time.".
The moment he'd said it you could tell that he was facepalming at himself internally, but the audience was laughing, and the actors on stage were trying to hide their grins, and he totally pulled it off. It was absolutely adorable. He's such a goof.
The nice thing about it was, though, that not only David was adorable and amazing, but the rest of the actors were pretty awesome, too. I loved the King, who was played by Edward Bennett, and of course Rosaline - Nina Sonsanya, who was in Casanova, Love Actually, Bonekickers, and who played the little girl's mother in the 2nd season Doctor Who episode Fear Her.
The play was a lot of fun, and watching David Tennant dance a semi-Russian dance routine while dressed up in red boots and a fake ginger beard was quite an experience. Thus, the first part of the day could definitely be filed under 'success'.
After the play, svanderslice and I went outside to find the stage door. We did find it eventually, but when we turned around the corner, David was just going back inside - I only saw a couple of dark strands and a wave and then he was gone, lol. But at least now we knew where to go after Hamlet.
We went to get fish and chips, and wandered around Stratford a little - we got some coffee at Costa's and had a deep conversation about the Doctor's relationship to Rose - and then went back to the theater to take a look around. They'd put up loads of pictures from the plays all over the walls, and we had our fun groping David's photos.
This one was right outside the ladies room - I wonder if that should tell us anything, lol - and everybody I talked to agreed that they should have used this instead of the promo pic that they did end up using.
But I guess it didn't qualify because he's not looking at the camera.
Before we went inside to see Hamlet, svanderslice had a brush with fame - Patrick Stewart walked right past her in the gift shop. I was distracted by the programs, so I only got to see his back, but !!! Patrick Stewart, less than two meters away! It was exciting.
Around 7, we went back to our seats to see Hamlet. The stage setting of LLL was gone, obviously, and there was nothing on the stage, but the floor had been turned shiny, and there were big mirrors in the background. The first scene - the one when the guards meet the ghost of Hamlet's father for the first time - set up the mood for the play exceedingly well. The theater was completely dark except for two flashlights that the actors were carrying and pointing at the black, reflective stage floor. That way, nothing was ever illuminated directly, but only ever shone on by the reflected flashlight beams. It was pretty amazing. The whole stage setting was, actually - it was very minimalistic, but they worked a lot with colors (black and white plus colorful accents, usually red ones) and mirrors. Also, they let the stage setting deteriorate along with the mental stability of the people in the play - after Hamlet had shot Polonius, they left the broken mirror in the background for the rest of the play, and the chandeliers which they suspended from the ceiling for the indoors scenes were hanging all in one height in the beginning, but were all messed up later on. It was rather subtle, but very cool.
David's first monologue - the too, too solid flesh one - was good, but actually, I loved it less than I'd thought I would. He played it with a lot of sobbing and crying and kneeling on the floor, and personally, I'd always imagined Hamlet to be less emotional and more numb bordering on angry in that scene. But I guess it just took me a moment to get used to his idea of the character, because as soon as Hamlet started to act mad, he had me. It was so very intense. And later on, I could see where he was coming from in the emotional scenes as well (Ophelia's funeral etc).
I did love his version of the to be or not to be speech. I have to admit, when he walked on stage to do it, my mind was less on Shakespeare and more on those loose jeans he was wearing - it was the first time in the play that he showed up in casual dress; red t-shirt, loose jeans and bare feet, and he looked very pretty and young in them. But I did manage to contain my drooling to listen to the monologue. (Actually, I felt kind of bad. That's him having his moment as srs bzns actor, doing the Hamlet monologue, and all I'm doing is drooling, lol.) But as I said, once I got over the clothes, I did listen to the monologue, and I loved it a lot. Coming from Classic Trek fandom, I think I associate some sort of tragic emotional plot with every single famous quote from that speech, which made it even more intense.
I can't actually say what my favorite scene was. Maybe the one with Gertrude in the closet - after Hamlet shot Polonius, and when the ghost shows up again. There was so much emotion in that scene, and it did seem a little wrong, because it was a son attacking his mother in a slightly ambiguous way, but then, them comforting each other as a family in a time of duress, that bit seemed absolutely right. It was definitely one of my top five scenes.
The other actors in the play were all very good, too. There was no-one that I thought wasn't doing really well, although I have to admit that Patrick Stewart was a little less than I'd expected. Don't get me wrong, he was good and did an awesome job, but he didn't stand out against the others. And David made him go out of character at one point - it was at a late point in the play, and David was making one of his crazy faces, and Patrick Stewart had to laugh. It was sweet, because you could practically see him holding his breath, trying not to burst out laughing loudly. He got over it very quickly though.
The one scene I did love him in, when I thought he was really good, was when he and Laertes were planning Hamlet's assassination. He seemed exactly the right kind of guilty, evil and determined - and reacted exactly right when Gertrude showed up to tell them that Ophelia had killed herself. It just worked, which might have been Edward Bennet (Laertes) and Patrick Stewart playing off each other and developing the right kind of chemistry.
One last scene that should be mentioned: Gertrude realizing in the final scene that the cup is poisoned and drinking it anyway. It was such a tiny thing, but it left such a huge impact. It just summed up the whole fucked-up-ness of Hamlet's world; his mother wanting to punish her husband more than she wanted to be there for her son. I loved it.
Then the play was over, and svanderslice and I decided not to wait until the actors had gone off stage and come back on for how ever many times they did that, but we made our way outside and made a run for the stage door. It paid out; when we got there, there were already quite a few people, but we did manage to get quite close to the barrier. It didn't take David long to come out, and svanderslice managed to get some pictures.
These are not zoomed in. He was actually this close. He was being very nice, and the crowd wasn't really all that crazy - I guess the actual crazies have already come and gone. There was this one girl with an enormous camera standing right in front of me, and he was like, 'That's a big camera you got there. Are you from the Sun?'. She laughed and said no and took his picture, but she was so close, all she could have gotten was his nose.
And yes, I did get his autograph.
After that, svanderslice and I decided to make our way away from the crowd, because since we'd ended up quite far up front, people were kinda squishing us. So we did not get to see Patrick Stewart - but then, we'd already met him, after all ;). We went to find an open pub - harder to find than you'd think at 11pm in Stratford upon Avon - and had a drink, and then I accompanied svanderslice back to her B&B place, where her husband was waiting up for her. They are both lovely people, and if there's anything I regret about this Saturday, it's that I didn't get to spend more time with them.
I then made my way back to the coach station, where I arrived around 1.30, which left me with roughly another 2 hours until my coach would arrive. I met some lovely people there at the station, who had like me decided that they didn't want to pay for accommodation and would take a late night/early morning coach home. I had some interesting conversations about Hamlet, Shakespeare, Doctor Who, uni courses, and all sorts of other things.
The coach ended up being almost an hour late, but since I had a 1.5h layover at Heathrow anyway, I didn't really care. By the time I got home I was very, very tired, but also very, very happy. Now that I've slept, only the very, very happy feeling is left over, and I can't believe I'm lucky enough to get the chance to see Hamlet again in January. I'll be very interested in how they will adapt the stage setting to the layout of the Novello theater.
This ended up being very long. Did any of you actually read all of this? Lol ;).