Day 109, 25 April: In the Rain with Shakespeare

Norfolk Terrace, UEA, Norwich, Day 109. In the Rain with Shakespeare

I made it up at 4:10am. The taxi texted its arrival seven minutes before my desired pick-up time, 4:30. Rushing, I grabbed my shaving cream and razor and backpack and left. I edited the third draft of my short story on the train, then brainstormed the part two of the assignment, a 500-word critical self-commentary.

The Royal Shakespeare Theatre

      I shaved at Liverpool Street Station in London, bidding my time until Sierra’s later train came in (the cheapest train for me was 5am—I got the ticket later than I should’ve). Sierra and I made it through the Underground to King’s Cross, vaguely knowing where to go until we saw familiar faces from our London orientation. It felt like yesterday since I’d seen them. Jennifer and Sarah I saw first—they were wearing so many layers and jackets that they looked like eskimos. I then saw Katy and Jami. Amelia and Amy were there too; they had both cut their hair for a stylish look. Out of the eleven of us, eight of us had decided to go on this Shakespearean excursion to Stratford-upon-Avon. There were a dozen or more there too, since this was a whole UCEAP-opened event, but I met only one or two of them.

Jennifer and Sarah, as Eskimos

      The coaches both ways were my times to sleep, building up to a little over 6 hours by the end of the day. Unfortunately, we had to quit our first coach, a Mercedes Benz, due to technical issues, and the whole day was a day of rain. London, Norwich (I heard from Dan it was pouring there), and Stratford-upon-Avon.

      Still, the trip was well worth the effort. Upon arrival, my first glimpse of the provincial town of Stratford-upon-Avon involved the canal running right next to an elaborate structure I discovered to be the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. This town is the birthplace of Shakespeare, so the theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company naturally had to live up to the standard expected of its Shakespearean tribute.

Half a Chicken

      Lunch was incredible. On our way there, we walked along the canal, stopping for a photo op as a group and then another one to take pictures of the swans, coming up to us and expecting food. I began seeing barge after barge of restaurant boats, and I forgot to ask why they were there. We crossed the street and there was the restaurant, The Encore. We had all pre-ordered via email a month in advance, for the sake of convenience. The mushroom side and the half-chicken entrée were incredible. Oh, and even the tea was superb. I was incredibly stuffed afterwards.

      Next was the play. On the upper circle, the third and highest tier of the theatre (designed like the Globe in London, but indoors and heavily modernized), we found our seats and watched The Comedy of Errors. I saw the plot hinge upon the whole doubleness that can be seen in Twelfth Night and even akin to Midsummer Night’s Dream (in the sense that the lovers mistaken who they love): two twin brothers wind up in the same town, one a stowaway and one a citizen, and they both have servants who are also twin brothers (long ago they lived together but were separated by a storm at sea). Things get all entangled with the mistaken identities.

Inside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre

      The set was one of the most impressive I had ever seen: a construction crane was situated on the high ceiling and literally lifted an entire living room with two characters seated at a table. There were trapdoors horizontally and vertically (upstage near the wings) and at the edge of one part of the stage was a tank of water to indicate the edge of a dock. An actual tank of water was placed on stage and used for the torture sequence in act one, scene one. The sets utterly blew me away.

Me in Front of Shakespeare's House

      The acting was equally superb. Maybe it was the acting, but I never got lost apart from the first scene. I followed the play and really, really loved the scenes in which the servants, both named Dromio, constantly got beaten up for disobeying orders (when they were really obeying the other brother, both confusingly named Antipholus). Amelia, a theatre major, commented later on one small flaw in one of the female characters, the overuse of arm movements. It was interesting to hear a critique from one who studies the subject. Lastly, the costumes helped bring the play into a modern atmosphere.

      The rest of our time in Stratford-upon-Avon, for most of the group, was spent walking the quaint streets and passing the old-fashioned buildings. We— Jami, Amelia, Amy, Amy’s friend, Katy, and I—as in our group of six,  took pictures of each other in front of the house Shakespeare lived in as a child, but the tour was thirteen pounds, so we decided to walk further and stop into the oh-too-tempting chocolate and olde sweet shoppes. We were in the rain with Shakespeare all around us—whether it was the house, or the statue of a jester with Shakespeare quotes on all four sides of the base, or the banner ‘Shakespeare’s Birthplace’ down one of the streets.

      The coach back to London was another nap, then Sierra and I spent our waiting hour at Liverpool Street Station having good conversations with Jennifer and her boyfriend Abdullah, who met up with his there. The British education system is definitely hard to adjust to, in the sense that all examinations come in May and June—there aren’t examinations after the first term in the fall, so the by-product is a five weeks of examinations. Luckily, I just have two in the first two weeks, but that means next Friday. And, just to topple on the stress, examinations are worth 50% or more of the courses. But we managed to talk about other things. Apparently Abdullah has got down a solid British accent in his year studying at Queen Mary University of London, getting his masters in finances in just one year (one upside to the British system).

      After a day of traveling, adding on the two-hour train ride back to Norwich and the taxi ride back to Norfolk Terrace at UEA, I was exhausted and in bed before midnight.