A Second Go

With 15 days left in England, it's time to start making some choices.

I promised myself that if I really liked something, I'd go back and visit it again before I left. Today I did that with The Globe and the British Museum.

When you buy your tickets online, you have a free tour and admission to the exhibition hall. I took advantage of that today, and while it's no substitute for attending a performance (which EVERYONE should have the chance to do before they die), it's a great stand-alone experience.

A well-informed guide walks you through the theater and gives a presentation about the theater itself, its construction, and Elizabethan times. If you've attended a performance, or have drama experience, or love Shakespeare, then odds are most of it will not be news to you, but that's okay. It's fun to watch other people get stoked by the experience, too.

The exhibition is a wonderful little museum, filled with play artifacts and interactive displays about the different aspects of play production at the Globe, which is really unlike play production anywhere else. It's important to remember that a play at the Globe is not just a play performance, but a play performance done under Elizabethan conditions. In other words, no miking, uniform lighting at night, and virtually no electronics.

My favorite part of the exhibit was the giant bear (as in, Exit, pursued by a ...), the Elizabeth I costume, and the musician scores/director's books on display from different plays. Makes me very excited about seeing 'Anne Boleyn' next Saturday afternoon.

I hit a couple of book stores I had read about. (I picked up Antigone from a store called SKOOB. Get it? 'Books' spelled backwards. It's a second-hand shop, and I could plunk down a LOT of money in there if it wasn't for my budget.) Then I trekked north to the British Museum to revisit Sutton Hoo, the Rosetta Stone, and a few other items, but also to see the stuff I missed the first time. There's a great Japanese wing with a bunch of cool crap from the Edo period (samurai armor, amazing statues and prints, and a daimyo's clock that really looks like a Dalek). There's also an Enlightenment Wing that covers the Renaissance and later...but the coolest discovery I made on the second pass was a statue of Thalia (pronounced tha-LIE-ah), the muse of comedy.

Should have left an offering!