won't you come out to play?

hello from the big bouncing bosoms of ye olde home-and-heart-land. we survived 24 hours in transit and got here at lunchtime.

we were met by a lovely driver (thanks mama ros!) who wore a very smart hat, and only smirked a little bit when we mentioned that we had had to pay excess baggage (burke and wills were lighter travelers than us. for serious.)

my mummy was here when we got home and she made us tea and ushered us into showers, and then served us homemade soup and chickpea pancakes. she had already cleaned the whole house, put fresh sheets on our bed, etc, before we got here. she let us sleep for an hour, then made us go for a walk, came with me to get groceries, and soon it will be a totally legitimate time to go to bed! huzzah!

will post photos of last days in london soon. possibly tonight. possibly tomorrow. we'll see how long i stay conscious!

hello from the beautiful city of bath!

a quick catch up on the last couple of days - mostly in photo form (again) :)

we had a lovely last morning in stratford-upon-avon. we visited the beautiful churchyard of the holy trinity church ( more graves, and some weeping willows )

then it was time for a last stroll through the rsc gardens...


a farewell kiss for mr tennant...


and we drove to bath - we took a stroll around in the evening light and it was really beautiful




today we have been wandering happily around bath - ( home of jane austen, pretty architecture, and other cool stuff )


i really love this city. it's so old and so majestic, and it's easy to imagine yourself right into a jane austen novel here. am very tired now, though, so i won't ramble any more. big kisses to you all xoxoxoxox

hamlet.

fucking. hamlet.

i don't actually know where to begin with this...

the overall look was a modern one, and reasonably minimal, which they made work really well (it reminded me of the rsc production of 'a midsummer night's dream' that i saw about 15 years ago where the only props the players had were doors, umbrellas and ribbons). they made amazing use of light - particularly in the first scenes with all the confusion about the ghost - it was all torches and reflective surfaces and it really evoked a sense of fear and charged the scene with a frenetic energy. with the combination of that, and the main set pieces being mirrors and chandeliers, the designers and director found a metaphor in the design for the key themes that run through the play - madness and sanity, good and evil, hope and despair - the play explores these things, and the even more interesting liminal places between them.

hamlet's madness was beautifully interpreted by director gregory doran and by mr tennant. in some productions it's played with a kind of wild abandon that in my opinion diminishes hamlets intelligence and the overall design of his feigned insanity. yes, he has moments of doubt and incredible anxiety, but he never truly runs mad - it's all a show to help him in his purpose avenging his father's murder. tennant played an almost doctor-esque, goofy, funny lunatic, while interspersing moments of perfect lucidity, and that made him so much more believable as a bereft son on a mission that felt he was "cursed... that ever [he] was born to set it right."

by contrast, ophelia's heartbroken insanity was heartbreaking in it's turn. the family scene (act 1, scene 3) where she, laertes, and polonius talk together, sets up their closeness and affection as a trio, and this makes it all the more painful when polonius dies. in some other productions polonius' death is interpreted as comic because of the witty remarks hamlet makes about it in his mad ramblings and evasive responses to enquiries about where he has stowed the body. but polonius' death is what drives ophelia mad - her grief for her father is what pushes her over the edge, and this production made that so elegantly clear. mariah gale played ophelia as a passionate, exuberant young woman at the beginning of the play, and that set up the tragic inversion of her innocent exuberance into a passionate insanity that was perfectly beautiful, and unbelievably sad.
it was interesting to read in the program that in preparation for the part doran and gale went down to the river where a young girl called katherine hamlet drowned when shakespeare was just fifteen. they picked flowers and made garlands, and in the process found some of the flowers and weeds described by gertrude when she reports ophelia's death to the king and laertes. they saw that in order to pick them "her skin would have become muddy, scratched, and red-raw with [nettle] stings." and that's how she appeared on the stage - in a muddy slip, covered in dirt and grime, clutching an armful of bedraggled weeds. it was exquisitely sad.

this company definitely found the humor in the play too. i think that's what i loved most about it - the gravity of the themes, and the genuine pain and turmoil of the characters was conveyed absolutely believably, yet the humour in the text was honoured as well. the two funniest characters ended up being polonius (played by oliver ford davies as a lovable but slightly doddery man who, in is rambles, tended to lose his train of thought) and the grave-digger (played as i think my inexperienced australian ears interpreted as a yorkshireman by mark hadfield), though tennant's sensitive timing and clever inflection made this hamlet a very funny one too.

and from the fangirl part of my brain?
1. barefoot!tennant = hot
2. bleeding!tennant = hot
3. crazy!tennant = hot
4. horatio/hamlet = otp

further thoughts after the second viewing.



in other news, none of the actors made an appearance at the stage door. i waited, with a handful of other fans, and for two and a half hours, but in the end we were too cold and tired, and we figured that he must have left some other way.
having come so far i was pretty disappointed not to get a glimpse of mr tennant 'in real life', but after the harassment he has received from some other fans i can completely understand his reluctance to meet any of us any more.
shame.

hiiiii! we're in LONDON! hahahaahahah!!!

we're staying with daniel_bethany's family, and it is really lovely. we had intended to be on our way to goring by now, where j, d & sj will begin thier walk tomorrow, but saj's bag was lost by the airline and we have to wait for it to be delivered here before we can move on. we are hoping that happens this afternoon. cross your fingers for us!

in the mean time it is very lovely to be here. our hosts have the most beautiful home, and it is very english... ( look )

yesterday, since we arrived at around 7am we decided that it would be bad for our jet-lag to go to bed, so j & d too us on a little trip to hampstead heath, ( and i think you'll agree that it is prettier than anything... )

after all that we stopped at a tea house for, surprisingly enough, some tea, and went to see keats' house (yes, the actual keats - i fucking love this country) which was closed, but still there to be gawked at from the outside.

i was convinced i was finwe and that jet lag wasn't going to hit me, but then i curled up on the couch and was pretty much instantly unconscious.

i bet you thought you'd have to wait a while to hear from me. hah.

we've flown to sydney where we are now lounging hilariously in the fancy-pplz lounge, as we have fancy-pplz tickets.
we're nomming brie and drinking champagne and baileys.

SAJEE'S BAG WEIGHED MORE THAN MINE! this has never, ever happened. ever! hahahah! (Ed: I would like to point out that my bag has hiking boots and a bulky backpack and a present for M. Tennant and a thermos and MANY OTHER HIKERLY THINGS! I am letting her gloat but I know in my heart that my bag really did weigh less. *shifty eyes*)
rattus! she hacked while i was on the loo!

i know we have only been on the road for half a day but i already have a story to tell you:
on my way through security i was stopped and the security guy said he needed to search through my bag. naturally, i acquiesced, as he explained that i had a large pair of scissors in there. i explained that it was an accident, and he was really nice about it. it turns out i'd chucked my pencil case in there without checking it and they were in there. the moral of the story is that while airport security may be paranoid, they don't necessarily assume you're trying to kill people.
i'd say it helped that i'm a rich young white woman, but i'm just glad not to have been cavity searched.

so, cheers from sydney!