It was a delight to return home and spend some quality time in London with my new husband! Ah – I am still enjoying the sensation of using that word in my regular vocabulary now. In between our musical activities, George and I enjoyed scrolling through our wedding photos and finishing off our handmade thank you cards. It is far too tempting to fill my blog with all the pictures, but I shall restrict myself to a few and happily share them with you soon.
On Friday we treated ourselves to last minute tickets to Romeo and Juliet, which was being performed at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on the bank of the river Thames. It was our first visit to this theatre and boy – it was remarkable. The theatre is an open-air Icosagon, (a 20 sided polygon) – this shape allows the audience to envelope the stage by either sitting in the galleries or standing in centre ground amid the action.
We were sat stage right, (I recommend sitting in the back row in the lower ground as most rows are benches but at the back you can lean against the wall for comfort). I particularly enjoyed how connected the actors were to the audience in this theatre – they often broke the 4th wall and really engaged all angles of the playing space so no area of the auditorium felt ignored. This personally made me feel enraptured by the drama and invested in the characters and their personal quirks and intricacies.
Fun fact about the theatre, they had to receive special permission to have a thatched roof, as there has been a law against thatched buildings in London since the Great Fire of 1666! The theatre now boasts the only thatched-roof in London. If you would like to take a virtual tour of the theatre you can do so by clicking HERE:
The company performed with gusto, creating moments of intimacy, hilarity and sadness. They infused modern issues within the traditional Shakespearean text to show how relevant this historical play is to modern life, by interspersing bone chilling statistics and thoughtful musings on present day situations through a large screen above the playing space.
I would definitely recommend, to anyone who can, visiting this theatre or catching this energetic production before it closes at the end of this month.
As an additional burst of energy to my morning, I was able to cheer on the runners as they reached the 7 mile mark in the London Marathon today. It was a joy to see so many people focused on a shared goal and raising funds for charity in the process. Congratulations to all the runners involved.