My First Production

The Royal Shakespeare Company's tour of King Lear landed at the New London Theatre last night, and I was fortunate enough to score some £5 tickets. Well, I wasn't, but my friend Chris was. So after work yesterday, I headed over to London to enjoy an evening of the theatre. The bus, of course, that's supposed to - and constantly boasts about it - stop every 10 minutes didn't come for a half an hour. Because of that, every stop took 15 minutes so people could buy tickets and hop on. So two and a half hours later (what should have been an hour and a half), I arrived in Covent Garden and Chris and I made it to the show.

Ian McKellan, you know him as Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, played the part of King Lear and was fantastic. Every other line sounded like he was going to yell at Peregrin Took or Samwise Gamgee, but he stuck to the script and played an amazing crazy person. I haven't seen, or been in, a production for so long that I forgot how pulling it is. How incredibly intoxicating. I really enjoyed it, mainly because there was so much heart and fullness, and also because it was REAL Shakespeare. This was no high school play. At least six of the characters were ones I could recognize by face and name the films they'd acted in, and of course, having the caliber of Sir Ian McKellan 100 feet from you was always exciting as well. I'm ready to come home and try to get into the Beef'n'Boards productions. Man, that would be fun. So, we'll see. Till then, I'll try to keep getting £5 tickets and watching the classics. Cheers!