5/25: Crowded Shafts, Crowded Tubes, and The National Theatre 

We have been in London for about 3 days now and I have been having a great time just walking around the city. My favorite moment so far has been getting to walk through London at night on the way home from seeing Dancing at Lughnasa at The National Theatre in Southbank (after jumping out of The Tube for a last-minute Shake Shack voyage). Experiencing the city from my 21-year-old perspective is much different than when I was here at 17 and it almost feels like a completely different city (my parents not being here may also have something to do with that) and I am having a great time getting to explore the city with my friends. My opinion on Dancing at Lughnasa has definitely varied over the past couple of days, but overall, I just did not enjoy the script. The set design, however, was absolutely phenomenal. The stage was in a forced perspective which got both smaller and taller as the set went further upstage, making the garden seem as though it stretched into the Irish hillside. As character’s entered from upstage and traveled downstage, it felt as though they were approaching from far away, which allowed for many comedic moments between the sisters, specifically from Maggie, as they would watch Jerry approach. The acting was also very good in the show, the only flaw that comes to my mind in the acting department is that many of Michael’s lines during his monologues were read with the same intonation and that made some of those monologues very hard to pay attention to without zoning out. And Michael has some long-ass monologues. Despite that, the rest of the actors did very well, the dancing scene in Act 1 was a particularly enjoyable moment. However, the script is just so entirely boring and nothing happens throughout it that isn’t already stated in a boring monologue, so the show itself just felt a little pointless. I loved The National Theatre, however, and I plan on getting tickets to see either The Crucible or The Motive and the Cue just to see another play on the same scale, production-wise. We just got back from touring the Tower of London and I am about to head to Teatime so I’ll throw in some pictures for the fun of it. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button for more posts.