This morning's Contemporary Britain class was all about the Kray twins, gangsters who ran London's East End till they finally got jailed. The professor had done quite a bit of sociology research and had written an article on the twins, so he really knew what he was talking about. For Museums class, we walked through Hyde Park over by Oxford Street to see the Wallace Collection, which is basically one family's amazing art and artifact collection housed in their old mansion. It was pretty incredible. It's best known for it's Rococo art, and it did not disappoint. There were frills and crazy flourishes everywhere! The collectors really liked that strange "peasant farmer"-style of still life painting. In one room, I counted 11 paintings of dead animals on one wall alone! For some odd reason, every other painting seemed to have at least one or two dead lobsters in it! It was a lot of fun to walk through the rooms and see the different themes and styles. I loved the beautiful re-done wallpaper in bright colors. Rococo art is just fun to look at and kind of giggle over all the insane details and extra flounces and curlicues. On the walk back, my friends and I stopped for Belgian waffles drizzled in creamy milk chocolate which we ate as we strolled back through the park. I am so going to miss this city!!!
Tonight was the looooong-awaited production of Frankenstein! Unfortunately for me, the first thing I learned upon arriving at 7 was that my favorite actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, who was supposed to be playing the Creature, had lost his voice at the matinee. The other actor that shares the role (the two are both famous and they switch off between being the Creature and Dr Frankenstein), Jonny Lee Miller, was getting his Creature makeup on last-second and the show had to be pushed back till 8 for him and the understudy to get ready. When we got into the theater, I was amazed at how they had changed the space from when we had seen Hamlet there just a few months ago. The walls were all covered with gray painted rough fabric, which we had seen being made on our back stage tour back in January. The director of the production is Danny Boyle, who is really famous and really good, and he went all-out on the minimalist yet intricate set. Above the stage was hanging a big light-fixture for lack of a better word. It was a big elongate triangle-shaped mirror hung flat-side down, with different shapes and styles of light bulbs dangling from the surface of the mirror. When we first got there, they were lit up with a red light so they looked really sinister, almost like dripping blood. On the stage, they had the center part turning round and round, with a strange object on it. It was a probably 7 ft square frame suspending a round semi-transparent buckskin-colored balloon-like thing, except where a balloon is spherical, this was like two circles that bulged out but were sewn together all around. We eventually realized that inside the shape was a man. We could only see his silhouette and later we realized that it was supposed to be like an artificial "womb" structure. This rendition of Frankenstein started with the Creature's "birth" scene, which is not how the book goes, but I guess they took some artistic license. The Creature burst from his "womb" and onto the floor where the poor guy writhed around on the stage for at least 15 minutes, naked and made up to look like he had been grotesquely sewn together, trying to discover how to use his limbs. The actor, Jonny Lee Miller, was really incredible. He flopped around like a newborn giraffe, unable to get his legs to work. He played the Creature as very child-like, which made the rendition even sadder. The understudy for Dr Frankenstein did a pretty good job. He did very well at the mad scientist bits, but not so well expressing emotion, especially when he's supposed to be sad when the Creature kills his little brother in a bid for attention, and during the romantic parts with his fiance Elizabeth.
Throughout the show, the light fixture above the stage was used to show changing time of day, mood, and season. The lighting and sound effects were incredible. There was one strange, incongruous moment that happened just as the Creature was rejected by a horrified Dr Frankenstein and ran away into the world. As we were watching the poor Creature get beaten and screamed at, suddenly a train burst from the back of the stage. Problem was, it was weird. The play is, I believe, supposed to be set in the late 1700s, but this train was done in what I'd call "Steampunk" style. It was made of gears and chains, spewing fireworks, and the people riding it were wearing Steampunk-style goggles and clothing. It was really odd and only lasted long enough for the people to jump off and beat up the Creature, but it definitely did not fit. I don't know what the heck Danny Boyle had been thinking. The rest of the play was pretty much how you'd expect a beautifully done rendition of Frankenstein to be: sad and mesmerizing. The acting on the part of Jonny Lee Miller was phenomenal. I was sad for the Creature, but also recognized the wickedness it had decided to embrace. The Frankenstein understudy was ok, but I wanted Cumberbatch. The girl who played Elizabeth, Naomie Harris, who is a famous British actress (she also played Calypso in Pirates of the Caribbean), was really good. The guy who played the old blind man who befriends the creature was really good. The only bad one was Frankenstein's father, who has a decently large minor role. The actor was just awful. Like, embarrassingly awful. We could not imagine how they could have cast this guy, but when we got home we found out he shares the last name of the actress who did Elizabeth, so hopefully that's why they cast him because he was bad. I just about died of fright when the Creature lept from the bed in the scene where he kills Elizabeth. As he jumped, we realized that he had been concealed in a man-sized cavity in the mattress and covered with the sheet so we had had no idea that he was in there. It was super scary!
All in all, I'm kind of glad I didn't see Cumberbatch in the role of the Creature. It's just such a sad, grotesque and heart-breaking role. Plus the Creature does have to flop around naked for awhile, and well, that's just awkward. Anyway, I immensely enjoyed myself but now I'm going to find something happy to read before I go to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment