Today was a Shakespearean double-header, and my feet are feeling it. That made six hours of standing today. It's ridiculous to buy seats at the Globe when you can stand for a quarter of the price, until you are 90 minutes into a three and a half hour Othello, and then you think maybe buying a seat isn't so bad. Fortunately I know the in's and out's of the Globe, so I snuck into an empty seat for the second half, safely out of the view of the Nazi floor patrol who won't let the groundlings sit. Ever. Even if they are dying. And by the end of Othello, a lot of people were dying, onstage and off.
I thought Othello was just OK. Iago was played by Tim McInnerny, who I recognized from Notting Hill. I think he was sick during our performance, because he coughed a lot and his voice sounded raw. To his credit, though, he kept the energy up. Eamonn Walker was good but not great as Othello, but I thought Zoe Tapper was a fantastic Desdemona. Mostly because I like anyone named Zoe Tapper. Seriously! Oh, you do too? Great! Let's start a club!
Love's Labour's Lost was really fun, and I'm glad we got to see it. Nobody ever does it, and it's usually because the language is really difficult. It's not a really accessible play. Also, as I mentioned in an earlier post, it's super dirty. This performance featured mating deer, and the naked bum of a 65 year old man. They played up all the dirty jokes, and we laughed like we were at Scout camp again. Michelle Terry was a really great Princess, and seemed to handle the physical humor as well as the verbal. She was much funnier in this than she was in The Crucible last year. Go figure. She just didn't get the hilarity that is The Crucible, I guess. Trystan Gravelle was a funny (Scottish) Berowne. I'm giving these people props in case they google their names and find my blog. What? It happens!
I'm including this picture to prove that, in this play, one character gave another character a titty-twister.
Another thing that happened at this show was that a mysterious eastern european girl was hell-bent on eating Alex's hobnobs. Here's how it went down. Alex had some hobnobs, which are these chocolaty graham cracker cookies, and he was disbursing them to the rest of our group at intermission. Liz had one and had taken one bite, when this mysterious blonde eastern european girl asked her if she could have the rest of it. So Liz obliged, even though that's really weird. I was in the toilets. When I got back, this mysterious blonde eastern european girl grabbed my arm and said:
"Yessss, excuse me? Cood you ask yoor friend eef I could hove anoter cookie, pliz?"
So I asked Alex if she could have another one, but they were all out. She seemed really crestfallen, even though she had already eaten Liz's. That's pretty much the whole story. But don't' you think that's strange, that this girl randomly asks for people's cookies? And don't try to tell me that she was poor or homeless, because what is a mysterious blonde eastern european homeless girl doing at the theatre? I don't buy it. Save yourself the 5 pounds and go to Burger King, Natasha! That's my advice.
