With that in mind, let me relate to you the thrilling and hair-raising adventure we embarked upon this weekend. For my birthday this week, Mom and Jeff were generous enough to give me tickets to see The Lion King at the Lyceum Theater in London. I LOVE going to see shows. I especially love excuses to see shows in London’s West End. It’s a lot of fun. And as Charlotte loves these things too, especially Disney-related or intricate costume-related events, and as she has a convenient flat close to London’s West End (I swear that wasn’t the main reason I invited you Charlotte… it just happened to be an extremely convenient coincidence), and as she’s going to be leaving the UK within a month or two, she was naturally the person I wanted to come see the show with me.
I had some beautiful timing worked out: I would hop on a bus from Cardiff at 1pm and arrive in London at 4:30pm, giving us half an hour to get to the Ethiopian restaurant I wanted to try (African theme!), an hour and twenty minutes to eat. and another 25 minutes to get to the theater, with 45 minutes to spare before the show started. DO YOU SEE HOW I FACTORED IN SLUSH TIME? DID IT WORK? You’ll have to judge that for yourself, based on whether you define “working” as not needing to use the slush time or the slush time saving our butts.
Victoria Coach Station and Victoria Station proper were the first obstacles to our adventure. While both are technically “Victoria station”, they’re about two blocks apart, and Victoria station is one of the most crowded and busy stations in London. A perfect place to try to meet a friend. Fortunately, the place Charlotte chose to position herself was coincidentally a memorable spot for me based on the perils and circumstance of another trip which took me through Victoria, and I found her with only ONE case of mistaken identity along the way. You wouldn’t think Charlotte’s hair would show up on other people’s heads, but apparently it does.
From there, a combination of needing to look up the bus we needed to get to the Ethiopian restaurant across the river, not knowing what demented logic dictated the placement and ordering of the bus station stops scattered around Victoria Station, and the opaque uniformity of construction work barriers either hindered our escape from the station or aided our subconscious desires to get some exercise before dinner and a show. I had also, conveniently, left my Oyster card at home, allowing us to experience the wonder that is the Oyster card line at Victoria station (I’m only halfway sarcastic here: the line actually went surprisingly fast and probably took up less of our time than wandering back and forth in the station trying to find the bus stop did).
Finally on the bus, we were able to enjoy a brief moment of heading in the direction we meant to go and having a chance to study the maps on our phones before we were thrown headlong into the challenge of walking to the restaurant, which we managed to find, but only after an encounter with an urban fox (I didn’t know they had those in London, but now I see that makes sense in a very English sort of way), obliviously passing the restaurant itself (it was hiding behind a mosque! We were understandably confused!), and walking the wrong way down the road. We felt quite silly when we finally located it. It was right next to us. At this point we were 45 minutes behind schedule.
The food and restaurant style itself were great… This cuisine style has no utensils; you use the flat bread to pinch or sop up the other food on your plate, and then eat the flatbread along with everything else. There were two cut styles of this bread at our table: one a giant circle that gave you impression of the basis for the largest burrito you will ever attempt to consume, and the other a rolled cut that, unrolled, has a zigzag pattern that reminded me of the zigzag patterns I was seeing in the art on the table and walls. I thought that was pretty neat. Overall, I wouldn’t say it’s now my favorite cuisine style, but I did enjoy the experience and would be willing to try other dishes. I was just pleased we made it there at all.
Fortunately for our schedule, there was a bus stop literally right outside the restaurant, with several busses that would take us in a straight line to Lyceum Theater. Such a straight line, in fact, that had we been paying attention to our surroundings and what was right in front of us rather than to the maps on our phones, we would have noticed the gigantic sign saying “Lyceum Theater” and the large, stylized Lion’s head staring at us from across the street, directly in line with the bus. But no, off we sprinted to the left, with 5 minutes left on the clock until the curtain rose. Realizing our mistake and sprinting back in the other direction, then stopping and asking for directions when we were 100 meters from the theater, we made it to the ticket collection office as they were asking people to take their seats and threatening to close the doors. One more wrong turn later (we went to the wrong line- a different level of the theater), we managed to make it in with the last of the throng of people shuffling around feeling confused about seating arrangements. Two of whom were confused enough to be in our seats (C11 and C12) instead of their own (E3 and E4). I’m really not sure how they mixed that up, but I was too relieved to have made it on time (barely!) to care.
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| Charlotte's best "I'm not sure about what she's doing, but I'm going to play along so this crazy person doesn't kill me" face. |
The musical was fantastic. I especially loved the mechanisms they incorporated into the costumes. Because of the nature of the characters, the human element and the animal element of the costumes were intertwined in a kind of duality that evoked a feeling of metaphor manifested. Some costumes were set up in such a way that the actors needed to incorporate animal character-inspired movements into their own expressions in order to engage the costume itself, making it appear that the costume was a living, manifested, symbiotic personality with its own dual existence, yet inseparable from the actor wearing it. For example, Mufasa and Scar had masks that could sit above their heads or be pulled down to a lower level covering more of their face, essentially “putting on” the lion. They didn’t need to use their hands to pull these down however- they instead twisted their heads in a catlike motion, engaging some sort of simple mechanism in the mask that shifted its position above their heads. It was fascinating.
It was very cool to see how they fit the human shape to the animal’s for all the different varieties present in the show, but I think my favorite was the gazelles: one dancer would carry a gazelle shape on her head and a gazelle shape on each arm, and the way she leapt across the stage would arc the gazelles in a really beautiful manner that did truly evoke the impression of a herd of gazelles.
There was plenty of humor in the show as well, with Zazu, Timone and Pumba, and Raffiki wreaking havoc around the stage and catching us off guard with references to “Let it Go” and by suddenly appearing swinging across the stage… Even so, one of the funniest parts for Charlotte and me was when, as Mufasa was introducing the young Simba to “all that the light touches”, and Simba asked about the shadowlands, we both turned to each other at the same time and whispered in sync: “That is Oakland. You must never go there.” (I apologize to my UK friends… you’ve got to live in California’s Bay Area to get that one.)
The strangest parts of the show were listening to the characters speak with English accents, a few strangely placed and strangely garbed plant life characters (I’m still not sure why the rhododendron bushes with the giant pompoms were there, or why that poor man was standing in the background with giant leaves fanning out behind him, another giant fanned leaf in an important section in front, and nothing else), and the William Shatner-style delivery of a few of Scar’s dramatic lines.
I must commend the child actors for Simba and Nala though- they were running around on stage with the best of them. And I’m going to have the watering hole song and the opening song and the circle of life song stuck in my head simultaneously for the next few days.
Other parts I loved:
- the shadow puppets they used for transitions and montages
- the bicycle gear wheelbarrow of antelope herds
- the incorporation of a reference to Riverdance, playing to the audience
- the bird kites
When the play got out, it was raining, but we had a lovely, now relaxed walk through West End and Chinatown back to Charlotte’s flat, where I took full advantage of her culinary school advanced pastry leftovers (mmmmmmm….).
This morning we visited our favorite breakfast spot again (Speedy’s, the filming location of the 221B Bakers Street front and Mrs Hudson’s shop), where I discovered that I had lost my debit card. Given that I had dropped it in Victoria Station, had difficulties purchasing things with it due to my own failure to transfer money into my checking account, especially important with the pending transaction from the Oyster card making it appear there was more money in my account than was available to use (sigh), and our rush onto the bus to Lyceum theater, I’m not surprised I lost it. The Fates seemed determined to make it unavailable to me. Fortunately, I’m back on the bus to Cardiff now and will hopefully be able to deal with it soon. I’m a bit angry with myself, but on the whole, all Charlotte and I can do is laugh, because Murphy’s law seems to apply all that much more strongly when we travel together. I’m still surprised and thrilled we made it to the show on time last night. Good thing I had all that slush time built in.
And THANK YOU SO MUCH MOM AND JEFF for sending us there!
And THANK YOU SO MUCH MOM AND JEFF for sending us there!
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