Day #79

Although our play started at 7:30pm, for some reason we booked our tickets to London to leave from Canterbury at 10:05.......... So we had over 7 hours in London before our show! We did a little bit of homework before heading to Oxford Circus and promptly figuring out we could afford roughly nothing. Still, it was fun to look around at the cute holiday decorations!

At 4:30 my one friend and I met our third friend at the Globe and accidentally wound up at an American restaurant... Oops. One of the waiters wanted to know if we were from Delaware, Louisiana, or Hawaii because those were the only states from which he hadn't met anyone yet. Unfortunately, being from Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York, we couldn't really help him out. But we told him we'd send along our friends if they ever went to London! So take note, all you people reading from Delaware, Louisiana, or Hawaii- if you go to the BBQ place next to the Globe theatre and tell the staff you're from one of those three states, you'll get free dessert. He mentioned that last, otherwise I may have made Delaware my home for the evening....

So guess what? The show we went to see is called "Tis Pity She's a Whore", and is actually super famous. Also guess what again? IT'S VERY BLOODY AND GROSS AND TERRIFYING. I'm talking rip-her-eyeballs-out, literally-carve-out-her-heart-and-put-it-on-the-table kind of disturbing. I knew it was a tragedy, but this was... Well... A lot. Some lady in the audience fainted. Wherever you are, lady, I really hope you're okay (she had a lot of people helping her and we helped get her out of the theatre so I think she was fine, which is good). 

Aside from the appalling amount of fake blood used in that production, the stage and production space was stunning. There were two floors of hardwood seating with a beautifully hand-painted ceiling which dropped contraptions down from the heavens and a balcony for the love musicians that must have played at least 50 different instruments between the 3 of them. During the scene changes, the cast sang the different parts of a requiem (funeral mass), foreshadowing how many awful deaths are coming. The entire theatre was naturally lit, with 6 chandeliers and characters bringing candles and torches on and off stage to provide extra light. At the end of Act 1, the actors slowly snuffed out every candle so that the audience (and the actors themselves) were in total darkness for the first murder scene. All in all, it was an extremely impressive production, even though it was ten billion times more gory than any of us expected.

We made it back to our bus on time, and I listened to some great podcasts until we pulled into Canterbury at 1:20am (we took the 11:30 bus from London since the play ended around 10:45). The best money I've ever spent was on the cab we took back from the bus station- the busses from the station to the university run 24 hours... Except on Sundays. We definitely made the right decision not to walk the 40 minutes uphill in freezing weather like we did on our way back from Cardiff last weekend. Good god, Cardiff was only a week ago?

Also, for those of you who were wondering (that's your queue to look away if you're a little squeamish or think your kids are too young for horror movies), here's a picture of what my finger looks like two days into the healing process after accidentally snipping it while making paper snowflakes for my room:

Aw yis. Just kidding, it's actually not tooooo bad. We'll see what becomes of this. I'll be sure to keep you posted so we can experience the magical feat of human biology and healing together!