I had plenty of high expectations when coming to London. I knew the theatre would be great and there’d be some awesome sights and so much history to learn. However, there was one thing I truly wasn’t sure about before heading here – the food. American media is pretty tough on British cuisine. The most famous jokes are, of course, making fun of British people for eating beans on toast (which I found out that I quite enjoy) and for “calling fries ‘chips’ and chips ‘crisps’” Despite these expectations, I went in with an open mind. And oh boy, was I awarded for my receptiveness!

London’s markets are, in my opinion, a highlight of the British culinary world. On our trip we have gone to several markets, each unique in their foods, stores, and, most importantly, their availability of good seating. I’d like to talk through a few of these markets and illuminate what each has to its advantage.

After our trip to the Tower of London on May 23rd, we hit up Old Spitalfields Market. This market was bustling with people, many souvenir and trinket shops interspursed between delicious smelling food stalls. Taking Shawn’s recommendation, I got my meal at the market’s Indian restaurant (I cannot recall the name). I got a bento box with a delicious spicy chicken, rice, cucumber salad, and a fantastic sauce. Additionally I got a piece of cheese naan to dip into everything. The food was delicious, and I ended up getting an apple crumble and warm custard at Humble Crumble to bring home to the hotel for dessert. The food was all great, the market wasn’t too large or loud, and all-in-all Old Spitalfields certainly made a great start to our tour of many of London’s markets. But first, I have to talk about a great restaurant experience I had in London.

Because of how fantastic the Indian food was at Old Spitalfields, I knew I had to try some more. And so, after our visit to the Portrait Gallery on June 4th, Ilaria and I visited Dishoom, a popular British chain of high-end Indian restaurants.I have eaten Indian food once or twice before this trip, but never had it at a real restaurant like this. Ilaria really hadn’t either and so, we decided to kinda splurge and try as many things as possible. We ordered a bunch of plates including lamb chops, rice, and one of their most popular dishes, the chicken ruby. These with some cheese naan creating a heavenly meal that was different from any I’d experienced. We shared all the dishes, filling our plates (and stomachs) with whatever they could fit. It was all delicious and, to top it all off, our server gave us a complimentary rice pudding that was without compare. Altogether, it was my favorite eating experience I had in London. However, some of the markets also gave some tough competition.

Some of the best food I had came with a wonderful performance element. The first is the bowl of heaven from Camden Market seen in the picture above this text. This mouth-watering meal is the Masala Chips from Funky Chips. My first time getting these, Merritt and I decided to share a small. I was worried this would not be enough food, but, upon receiving the mountain of food in the picture, my worries were assuaged. On the topic of performance, the people at Funky Chips have their routine down. The actual making of the chips is a spectacle. All the ingredients are poured and mixed into one huge metal mixing bowl. While they do this the guy making the bowl yells out “best chips and england” Cheesy cheesy” “Spicy spicy” to which the other guys working there will repeat each one. At the end, they bring out the cardboard tray for the food. The chips are poured in and every time they did, I swore they wouldn’t be able to fit it in. But, every time, they would. And every time, eating it would be a magical experience.

The second performance-forward meal I ate requires a bit less description as I remembered to video the magic. This magic happened at Kappacasein Dairy with their Raclette, a pile of potatoes and onions covered in their freshly melted, right-off-the-wheel, cheese. The potatoes and cheese, with just a bit of salt and pepper, were indeed delicious. However, I would say that the performance element of this meal is more than the food itself while at Funky Chips, both the performance is great and the taste is especially phenomenal. If I could go back, I would probably choose funky chips over it, but they were both great!

We also got to see some amazing non-food-related performances. Going through the tube system of London, I noticed a lot of instances of live music and people busking. However, some of the best musicians and groups I’ve seen were in London’s markets. My first experience with the music of the markets was at Covent Garden. Here, I was with a small group just traveling through on one of our free afternoons when I stopped to listen to a musician. She was playing acoustic guitar and singing and sounded wonderful. She had a QR code for her social media and I scanned and followed her on Instagram. Her name is Alice SK and is a local London musician. She actually reached out to me a few days later and asked if I was at Covent Garden the other day. I said yes and we chatted on instagram about my study abroad and her live show stuff. If I ever come back to London, I’ll definitely try and see one of her headlining shows with her band!

I also was lucky enough to catch two bands at separate markets. One, the shorter video, was outside of Camden Market while the other was inside of Covent Garden. I didn’t get to watch the first for long. For the stringed sextet, I was able to stop and listen for a bit. They were phenomenal and even played a song from Game of Thrones before I left. I find the fact that these markets are able to be not just a place for food and trinkets but also a place where musicians can succeed is truly awesome. As a musician myself, I am even more tempted to run away and live in London!

I’ve resisted the temptation to stay in London for ever, but these proceeding additional pictures of meals Squirt and I have had will hopefully explain to you why I was tempted in the first place!

Some locations feel like a portal to the past. Like by simply being inside, you are transported to a time when that place was occupied by its original inhabitants. London and surrounding England has a myriad of places like that. So much of the history is intact and able to be viewed and walked in and on. However, as an actor and general lover of theatre, stepping in the Globe Theatre was when I felt this feeling the strongest.

On May 30th, our group had the opportunity to see Romeo & Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre. Additionally, I was able to see Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” at the Globe on June 7. But this is about Shakespeare! Now, of course, this isn’t the original stage that Shakespeare walked on or saw his plays performed on. His original theatre, called aptly The Theatre, was across the Thames and the original Globe on this side of the river burned down several hundred years ago. However, this one is still an exact replica of the original Globe theatre. As I stepped into the center of the area for the first time, I truly felt like I could see what it would have been like back then. I glanced up at where many people were already sat in their series of boxes in the circle of seats. I could see myself as a “groundling” of the old times, paying a shilling to stand and looking up at a noble couple fanning themselves while in their usual box. However, if I were this commoner, I would not envy the wealthy sitting above. The moment the show started, I could see the advantage of my place of viewing.

The interaction from the actors to the audience during Romeo and Juliet was the first thing that truly differentiated Shakespeare at the Globe vs anywhere else. When the Capulets first came out, one of them quite literally looked and pointed finger guns directly at me and said “bang.” I of course reacted in shock, and I think I threw my hands up slightly (which I think made the actor laugh a little bit). From the get-go, the actors were interacting directly with us. As the play went on, actors would enter the groundlings area at times and would very often say lines directly at audience members. The balcony scene was done through a balcony rolled out INTO THE AUDIENCE. Mercutio even kissed one of the people in the very front (or at least went fully for a kiss). This interactivity is what truly made me feel like I was watching a play in Shakespeare’s time. It felt truly authentic. A lot of great Shakespeare gets performed all around the world (in America as well), but I think, firstly, the relationship between the actors and the audience at the globe is how Shakespeare intended his plays to be done.

An additional aspect that I personally don’t see quite as much with especially American versions of Shakespeare now is the importance of music. Music is a huge part of Shakespeare and was intended to go with the plays since they were written. At Romeo and Juliet, a large swinging barn door near the top opened to show the live band playing the accompanying music. The picture above is meant to show the final pose of the curtain call with the barn door open and band visible, but my phone was unkind to me that day. Nonetheless, the consistent live music with actually singing from a few characters didn’t feel as much like something I’d see in America.

The one humorous thing about comparing this production to American Shakespeare is the fact that the director’s concept for this production was putting the show in the AMERICAN west. This I think worked beautifully for the play. The costumes were wonderful, the guns added a bit of new stakes to some situations, and lastly, oh good lord was the party scene so much fun. Having the first meeting of Romeo and Juliet be during a honky tonk style line dance was just a wonderful addition. I truly enjoyed the director’s concept and, as a whole, this production of Romeo and Juliet.

Here are some pictures of Squirt at both Romeo and Juliet and The Crucible. He enjoyed both thoroughly, however, he’s got a real love for the history of the Salem witch trials, so The Crucible was probably his favorite.

When I first decided to go on this trip, I talked to a few people who had previously attended it. They gave it high marks all around. And I mean, of course! You get to see a bunch of awesome shows and learn about the different ways in which our wonderful artform is done across the seas. However, one thing every person talked about was how the trip changed them. In the pitch Shawn gave me early on in my first semester that truly convinced me to go, he said that he always recommends theatre students do it as early as they can. Because, when you come back, you come back a different and more worldly theatre practitioner. Part of me questioned to what degree this would truly happen, but I heeded the program’s previous students’ and Shawn’s words.

Monday May 26, 2025, in the Ambassadors Theatre in London’s West End, at precisely 9:41 PM “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – An Unordinary Musical” concluded as the actors finished their bows and walked off stage. At that exact point in space and time (Monday May 26, 2025, in the Ambassadors Theatre in London’s West End, at precisely 9:41 PM), Shawn and the other past-Londoners were proven right. I realized at that moment that I would come home a different practitioner of the arts.

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” was originally a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A fun fact for you wonderful readers is that I watched a musical adaptation of his even more famous book, “Great Gatsby,” the day before watching this. I digress. Fitzgerald’s book about a baby born 80 years old who ages backwards was most famously adapted into a film starring Brad Pitt as the titular Benjamin. I have not personally watched this film, but from the clips I’ve seen, they (like the musical) do quite a few things to shift the book into a more… pleasant experience. The reason I hesitate (by way of ellipses) is that I do not truly believe the original book IS unpleasant. I enjoyed reading it when prepping for this trip. However, Fitzgerald treats the concept with a nihilism that makes the main character, as well as every other character, quite unlikable. And very hard to root for. We talked about this both in class in London and back home, and Susan (our wonderful English faculty on the trip), talked about how Fitzgerald very highly valued youth and beauty (especially in women). It shows through his writing that the loss of those through age is quite a negative to him. This voice shows through the main character of the novel. As he grows younger, he begins to despise his own wife for her age.

The musical handles this theming with realism, but also positivity. “Time and tide wait for no man” is a repeated line and sentiment throughout. Although Benjamin’s clock is going backwards, there is still no way to turn back time. There is no resistance to the flow of time. With this change from the book, the characters also view it more positively, allowing for romance and for characters the audience wants to see succeed. This is one of the most important parts of an adaptation of this kind: giving plenty for the audience to follow. With the loss of Fitzgerald’s nihilism and the addition of the advent of a theatrical (and musical) adaption, the production was able to make something uniquely delightful.

While the original story is based in America, this musical is based in Cornwall, England. It is based in a fishing town. With both of these nuggets of information, I feel like one could already imagine the sort of music that this musical features. Cornish folk music is the style used throughout. The production invokes the feel of a coastal tavern where all the inhabitants sing as they drink through the night. Pushing this image, the production has the actors also be the band. Actors narrate and sing as they play.

With this method of storytelling, the adaptation has a deeper sense of community. As the narration passes through Benjamin’s life, we see glimpses into the lives of recurring characters. Additionally, as most musicals do, it allows for those wonderful internal thoughts, background information, and such to be fed straight to the audience. Especially with this show, I felt that I cared much more for these characters as they interacted with cast/bandmates and felt I also understood what was driving them at each moment.

The final thing I’d like to talk about is how dealing with a story like this works as a play. That line about time and tide really speaks to the way the show flowed. Outside of intermission, there were no breaks for clapping or anything as the music (and with it the story) danced along from top to tail. This storytelling as I’ve been talking about has a certain storybook feel that, though extremely different from the original Fitzgerald novel, ends up having some essence of the original. However, the use of dialogue and true conversation between characters really set it apart from the novel. The original book is largely narration with small bits of talk between characters. The musical has constant chatter between characters as well as full scenes (without music) of true dialogue. These really help to ground the play as a story of people. The book seems like a fable, like the characters could never be real. But seeing Benjamin and the other characters in front of me and hearing their joy and pain, whether through song or speech, truly helped connect the themes right to my heart.

I seriously loved this show so so so so much. So much so that a group of us from this trip are planning on starting a band based off of this production. I still have to figure out what instrument Squirt’ll play. He tells me he plays a mean Glockenspiel. We’ll see about that.

I’ve always loved the prequel Star Wars movies. Sure, they have some flaws, some less than great performances and script choices… Jar Jar Binks. But there was some good in there too! To me, one of those main highlights was Ewan McGregor and his portrayal of a young Obi-Wan Kenobi. When I heard that we’d be able to see McGregor on stage on THE WEST END, I was ecstatic. On top of that, I had never seen or read Ibsen before, but was excited to finally get to see, even an abridged, version of his work. As can be seen by the picture beside this text, I was excited enough to buy a playbill before even sitting down. For reference, the only other play for which I bought a playbill in advance was Cabaret. Suffice it to say, expectations were quite high. Even if the play sucked, I would get to see one of my favorite actors, who would surely be a highlight of the play, and maybe even meet him after (I even found the stage door in advance).

To be blunt, the proceeding play was one of the most boring and frankly just un-artistic pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen. The selfie here was the actual reaction image I sent my family at intermission. I will expand on what aspects caused that reaction, however, I’d like to start on some more positive notes.

I thought the set was really phenomenal. Being the “master builder,” McGregor’s character is an architect with a new big project. This project is a refurbished church made into a center for art (all largely a conception from this new play and not Ibsen’s original). This production shows the project through a large crystalline staircase of sorts. This shift from the more brutalist towers by the original Henrik (main character of “The Master Builder”) to the modern and artistic McGregor’s Henry (“My Master Builder”) felt like a natural way of bringing it to “now.” The other set – Henry’s home – was a perfectly great looking modern home that felt fit to be the home of an architect.

I found the costumes largely fitting to the characters. Elizabeth Debicki’s character had a silver dress in the second act that felt accurate to Henry’s view of her, being his glowing beacon in a way. The rest were very nice, the protegee, Ragnar, having one of my favorites with a colorful outfit in the first act. I believe the costuming for Ewan McGregor’s Henry was much too casual. I thought perhaps at the party of the second act he would come out with something very refined to challenge the other characters and show some of his ego (a prominent aspect of the original). As matched the rest of the productions portrayal of Henry, his costumes never lived up to expectations. With this, we move on from positive notes and more onto my main thoughts of the play.

A question that might be coming to mind is “Why the change to ‘My Master Builder’ from the original?” This question was certainly on my own mind before watching it. That name change is one of many shifts that to me signify the way this playwright really dulled down the original story. In Ibsen’s play, Henrik was known for being a great architect. HIs continued ambition despite all else, even the death of his own children, is what makes the character who he is. This ambition is also what kills him, as he climbs his own tower and falls from the top. In the original, this death is also slightly ambiguous, possibly an accident caused by his vertigo or a suicide caused by the pressures surrounding him. Like his death, many past events in the lives of the characters feeling towards each other are somewhat shrouded in ambiguity. Henrik seems to almost have some jealousy towards his own protege, while his relationships with the women in his life are largely manipulative in nature. One of these women are even the one to coax him into climbing his tower. Altogether, though the original script is not perfect, it has many aspects that make it a complex and thoughtful take on the story of a flawed man.
My Master Builder puts an emphasis on the “My” above most all else. The story and Henry (this play’s Henrik) are defined almost solely by his relationship with the women in his life. These two women are his wife Elena and his former student, Mathilde. While the original play is told over an extended period of time, this story is told in one night. In it, the plot (if one could call it that) is largely taken over by scenes of Henrik arguing with Elena and then immediately fawning over Mathilde. Other than a few short mentions, this text keeps none of Henrik’s original focus on architecture and his ambition.Instead his only goal seems to be to rekindle his relationship with his student he had an affair with while he was a professor at a university. Except, he also makes no choices or moves towards achieving any goals, just talking aimlessly about the past. Henry’s death is also made into a complete accident as he falls after fireworks set off his vertigo after he climbed his crystal building as a show of love to Mathilde. Additionally, the playwright made the death of Henry’s son clearly and totally his own fault. Henry’s relationship with his protegee/apprentice is nonexistent as that character’s entire purpose was to be sleeping with Elena’s assistant, Kaia, and then have the wife hit on him. As I hope these details have shown, the plot and character relationships of the original hardly survived the shift.
I would love to use some fancy words and analysis to describe the dialogue, but as the playwright seemed to lack any tact or knowledge of human speech, I’ll match their wit. Each character said exactly what they were thinking and what they wanted. The dialogue lacked any color and not just in the sense that it was dry, just that the characters seemed to have no internal thought to allow for them to converse with each other with any complexity. This was also likely due to the lacking performances of the TV-famous leads.
Perhaps if I were a few feet away from their faces, the performances of Ewan McGregor and Elizabeth Debicki (as Mathilde) would have felt somewhat human. However, from the upper section where only dialogue and body movements are seen, both seemed quite lacking. The way the lines were said sounded like a first reading, pre-analysis, by two actors who got drunk the night before and forgot to pre-read the script so they are underprepared and hungover. The rest of the performances really weren’t bad, Kate Fleetwood had a real energy and grief to her performance as the somewhat unstable wife. The protegee and assistant both kept me engaged in their scenes and were quite entertaining. They were only held back by the script. Truly McGregor and Debicki were the weak links.

My biggest excitement was that, no matter how the play was, Ewan McGregor would be the highlight. I was let down. The stage door experience was also quite unpleasant, McGregor signed a very limited number of things and left quickly, though the crowd was (for a roped off stage door) not very big. The main pleasant part ended up being talking to the actress who played the assistant who was super pleasant. Then, a few of us stayed to discuss the show with a few Londoners at the stage door. This ended up being the perfect cap to the evening as they had the exact same thought that our group and I and Squirt had. A thought I’ll end this review off with – “What the hell?”