London Weekend Number Two

A few weeks ago, I went back down to London. I had planned three weekends of constantly seeing plays as well as being able to sightsee whilst being down there.

This time, I went down there and the major sights that I saw were St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Tate Modern art museum.

St. Paul’s was a brilliant sight. It’s probably the most beautiful church I’ve ever seen. It’s also the biggest. Its construction is made up of three domes, one on top of the other. The first dome holds the equivalent of the Eiffel Tower on top of it.

I couldn’t get any photos inside because the security personnel on sight had said that no pictures were aloud. I complied just for worry of getting chucked out. I didn’t go up to the very top also because I didn’t have time nor did I really want to. I did however go up to the top of the interior. It was a bit creepy being that high up. It was also a bit exhausting. The top of the interior contains the whispering gallery. One is able to lean against the wall, whisper and it goes across the room. As long as you have your ear pressed to the side of the dome you are able to hear what the other person is saying. This is possible because it is a perfect circle. One of the staff members demonstrated this to me by having me go across the interior of the dome stopping at several points. He would then whisper to me as I proceeding from one door to the next. It was pretty cool and I had a smile on my face every time it worked. I left shortly thereafter.

I headed across the Thames to the Tate Modern. Inside were all of these weird impressionist paintings by modern artist. All of it was very… strange. Unintelligible. I only recognized a few of the artists: Jackson Pollock and Fernand Lédger. I couldn’t really begin to name the rest. It was interesting stuff but I preferred the National Gallery. I did appreciate the fact that it was a free gallery though. It is free because it is subsidized by the government.

Afterward I got dinner and then went to the play for the evening. An Inspector Calls. It was an interesting show. The special effects were pretty nifty and I was impressed that the actors breaking props was part of the show. In fact part of the stage lifts up and dumps out most of this table from inside of a mock house. That was pretty nifty. It was an entertaining, suspenseful and at times creepy production.

The next day after checking out of my hotel, I went to Hyde Park. While most of London, especially the touristy parts of London, is full of hustle and bustle, this place was full of a sense of calm. I wish I was there when the flowers were in bloom because it then would have been an impressive site. Oh well, one can imagine.

The play for this afternoon was The Woman in Black. This production has been running since 1989 in the same theatre, the Fortune theatre. It’s a horror play which also works as meta-theatre as one character tells his story to an actor to learn how he can tell the story to his family. It begins slowly but this is there for us to get to know the characters. It’s quite a funny bit at the beginning. The play actually does become quite scary with doors opening and the ghost of the woman in black showing up at certain points in the play but is it maybe that she is showing up in real life? We don’t know until the very end. On paper, reading the play, I don’t think it would be that horrifying of an experience. On stage however, when a play can come alive, it does become quite freaky. The audience screamed quite a lot and then would stop laugh at the fact that they were screaming. Just because something isn’t real doesn’t make it any less scary. Like a good horror movie, this play utilized sound and hardly relied on cheap scares evoking atmosphere rather than just have “gotcha” moments. There still are those “gotcha” moments but they happen few and far between.