Monday

Today was a full day. So was yesterday.

Yesterday I went to go see the play about Shakespeare's plays condensed. It was pretty funny, and was actually rather refreshing because it was put on by three American actors (who sorta reminded me of the guys in Knocked Up). Despite saying they will condense all 37 plays, what they really do is spend an hour on Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, and then with the remaining 30 minutes blow through all of the other 35. Probably best since a lot of the other plays are really dull and not very popular. Highlights included the "brother from Venice" rap version of Othello, the sword fighting scene from Macbeth acted out using golf clubs, and Hamlet performed backwards in about 45 seconds. Funny, but not side-splitting, so maybe I wouldn't have paid as much as I did had I known. On the plus side, we found London's China town while waiting to go in, which was pretty lively. Even the smell was authentic.

Today we had class, then the actor who played Macbeth came and spoke to us and answered questions for an hour. I was pretty tired on the account of staying up half the night reading a book I had just bought. After that, I got a call from my friend Luke who I then had dinner with at an awesome Greek restaurant overlooking the Thames. Nice but not terribly expensive either. After that we parted ways and I went on to see Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Oh what a difference from Macbeth! This one was in the Globe theatre, which was built in 1970 to replica the one Shakespeare wrote his plays for. Everything was right about it, despite the fact that MoV is one of the most racist plays ever to see a theatre (Marlowe's Jew of Malta is still hundreds of times worse). Once you get beyond that, it was quite well done. Now I'm just going to get some sleep. I think most of my friends are starting to get sick, and I'm not feeling all that well either...